Erin McBean is Executive Producer at Infinity Squared. In this episode she breaks down Mountain Dew's "Do the Dew" campaign — a green screen shoot built almost entirely on AI-generated backgrounds, until the client's legal team said no three days before they rolled.
We get into how the production pivoted, why a smaller budget sometimes gives social content exactly what it needs, and what happens when you push back on an agency's creative approach before a single frame is shot.
Erin also on the pitch process — competitive pitches on shrinking budgets, jobs that get cancelled after three production companies have put in weeks of work, and why that needs to change.
Plus where production is actually heading in 2026. Erin's been at Infinity Squared for five years and has watched the industry shift faster than it ever has.
In What We're Watching: a punk band trashes a Denny's and it becomes the best brand ad of the year. And an AI campaign that convinced the entire internet — including Ethan — that Nike had just made the greatest sports ad of all time.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Cold open
00:22 Intro — episode 9, running out of outfits
03:05 Meet Erin McBean, EP at Infinity Squared
04:10 Mountain Dew "Do the Dew" — why this project
05:00 Car park budget, not Sydney Park
07:38 AI backgrounds — building the whole concept
09:18 Client says no to AI — three days out
13:00 The casting — Caleb gets painted green
14:15"Bite off more than you can chew and chew like crazy"
23:21 The pitch process is broken
25:06 The rejection/dating parallel
27:05 Where is production going in 2026?
31:08 What do you wish people knew about the EP role?
38:17 What We're Watching — Denny's punk band ad
40:54 The AI Nike campaign that fooled everyone
45:31 Wrap-up
📷 Instagram: @directorandthedop
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