Empire Cinemas

Creative direction, photography, and film for Empire Cinemas.

Film & Video Photography Creative Direction Entertainment

Empire Cinemas was already delivering spectacle inside its theatres. The task was to make that promise visible before anyone walked through the door: a visual language for marketing that could hold its own against the films it was selling.

The work started as a production brief and quickly became a creative direction problem. The team established a grammar borrowed from cinema itself: high contrast, deliberate depth of field, motion as atmosphere. Every frame was built to belong on the screens Empire operates.

100 Years Empire: Film

Creative Direction

The photography set aside product logic entirely. Lobby light, the weight of a seat, the hush before a film begins: the stills were drawn from the choreography of an evening out, composed to read equally on a full-bleed billboard and a compressed social thumbnail.

Short-form video followed the same calibration: pacing, colour grade, and sound chosen to evoke anticipation rather than transactional urgency. The result was an asset library that positions Empire not as a venue, but as a destination.

"Cinema marketing, to be effective, must itself feel cinematic."

Empire Cinemas operates at the intersection of spectacle and daily life, offering audiences in the region a gateway to world-class cinema. The brand's visual presence, however, had not kept pace with its ambitions. What the screens inside delivered in grandeur, the marketing imagery around them lacked. The brief was direct: produce a suite of photographic and video assets that could hold their own against the cinematic work they were promoting.

HoopAI approached the project as a production challenge with a creative direction problem at its core. Before a camera was raised, the team established a visual grammar, one that borrowed from the grammar of cinema itself. High contrast. Deliberate depth of field. Motion treated as atmosphere rather than spectacle. The goal was not to document Empire Cinemas but to make content that felt as if it belonged on the very screens the brand operates.

The photography work focused on the experiential layer of cinema attendance: light spilling through lobby glass, the weight of a reclining seat, the ritual of concessions, the hush before a film begins. These were not product shots or promotional stills. They were frames drawn from the choreography of an evening out. Each image was lit and composed to read as confidently in a full-bleed outdoor billboard as in a compressed social thumbnail.

The video production extended the same sensibility into motion. Short-form content was developed to perform across digital platforms, built for autoplay environments where the first two seconds must earn the next twenty. Pacing, colour grade, and sound selection were calibrated to evoke the anticipatory mood of a cinema visit rather than the transactional urgency of most entertainment advertising.

The resulting asset library gave Empire Cinemas a consistent, high-production visual identity across its channels, one that positions the brand not merely as a venue but as a destination. The work demonstrated that cinema marketing, to be effective, must itself feel cinematic.

Client

Empire Cinemas

Industry

Entertainment

Services

Creative Direction
Photography
Film & Video

Office

Dubai

Year

2024

Studio

HoopAI Creative Studio