Rafael Pavon: Creative Director bringing stories and ideas to life across immersive worlds, generative film and entertainment.

I'm a creative director and storyteller. For over a decade, I've made stories, experiences and products for Meta, Apple, Google and PlayStation: projects where the format, the process and the tools are part of the question. When the medium is new, the pipeline doesn't exist yet and nobody has done it before, that's where I do my best work: finding the story first, then designing the way to tell it.

I bring a storyteller's care to technical problems and a builder's mindset to creative briefs. I prototype in Unreal Engine, build AI workflows in ComfyUI and develop custom tools with Claude Code. I've led dozens of public releases across entertainment and technology. Most recently, I led the creative development of a major AI-powered product at Secret Level. Before that, I delivered products and platforms for Meta and Apple at Unit9, and creative directed Headspace XR for Meta Quest at Nexus Studios.

I studied Computer Science, switched to Fine Arts, found Flash, and did an MA in Film and Digital Media at Central Saint Martins. Immersive storytelling is what made it all click, in a Madrid garage at Future Lighthouse. By 2017 I was walking the Venice Film Festival red carpet with the first generation of immersive directors. Then came AtlasV, AdventureLab and The Mill in New York, where I created immersive experiences and physical installations for global brands (most still under wraps), and many more stories and products since.

Along the way, I've had the privilege of directing some of the finest talent in the world: screen legend Geraldine Chaplin, horror icon Robert Englund and Harry Potter's Rupert Grint, among many others. I've created alongside horror auteur Alexandre Aja, and once filmed Oscar Isaac for Esquire. The work has earned 90+ festival honours, including Venice, SXSW, Sundance and Cannes, plus Emmy® Television Academy Emerging Media membership and the Epic Games Unreal Fellowship.

Right now I'm focused on how AI tools can lift creative work across stories, teams and products, and on building the systems that protect the intention, the soul and the meaning that make it worth doing.

I'm also a lifelong nerd. I own more than 700 Stormtroopers, from helmets to shampoo bottles, all because I once wondered why something designed to intimidate makes so many people smile.

Working on something weird, AI-native, or wildly technical? Say hola.