Bright ideas Ideas are a magical thing. It’s a simple magical spark with enormous amounts of creative potential energy. When it’s translated into its kinetic form, it can release endless imaginative possibilities. I think the best ideas are very instinctual and natural. You have to always be ready – ideas are one of those things that might strike when you are getting off of the train or out of the shower. I prefer thinking of ideas where there is water around, like the beach.

Shared vision The great thing about this project was that I wasn’t looking for specific images – I was looking for images that would just talk to me. I would just type in concepts like happiness, for example, or colors or nature or whatever, and it would just come up with thousands of images. It was just great, so stimulating, so surprising. Some of the stuff you find are things that you would never think of. It’s funny how you can describe what images are conceptually and what they mean to different people. Just like a language, basically we all feel the same, looking at the same image.

Garden party You think of your project and you need to put it together somehow, so basically you gather the things that you need – we had the images from Getty for ours, and you need to get a model, location and costumes and all these things. I just basically grabbed my bike, went down to the Melbourne botanical gardens and just chose the spots that I wanted to use. Went there, shot it and just put it together. I was pretty lucky to find people that fit exactly with what my vision was like. We had a writer, we had someone who storyboarded the frames, I had people helping retouch each photograph to fit the props in properly – fix a bit of lighting and all that. Definitely my brother in postproduction and editing, he did an amazing job and he gave a lot of direction through his editing. My friend Luke helped out – he did an amazing elf.

Minute by minute Telling a story in 60 seconds is not an easy job, especially when you are playing around with concepts, so we had to be really strict with how we were going to tell the story and try to do it as best as we could. It’s not an easy concept to grasp, so basically what helped out a lot were the special effects I used to tell the story. I think it is a poor perception when people think that special effects are just used to create a “crazy” film. Special effects are made to make it easy to tell a story properly. Just using the equipment that we had at home, we were able to put it together with a digital camera and software like After Effects® and Studio Maximo. We actually texturized 3D images and Getty Images photographs – I thought it would be interesting to use photographs in a different way.

View Santiago’s pitch (PDF)

Three films that have inspired your work? Amélie, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet Romeo + Juliet, directed by Baz Luhrmann La Belle et la bête, directed by Jean Cocteau

Global reach The movie has literally been around the world a few times. It was shot in Melbourne, Australia. I took it with me to Canada, where we edited, then I went down to Mexico where I was directing via telephone and email, then back to Australia, where the film arrived a few days later than I did. Then sent it to Sydney, and on to Seattle, New York...and next? Part of the project, apart from creating and producing a film, was to promote the film, and it was amazing for me – because I am from Mexico, working in Australia – to send emails and make a few phone calls and have people on the other side of the world look at the work I am doing at the moment. That was really fun – it was a complete triangle – it was my family and friends from Mexico and then my brother and the crew that helped out in Toronto, and then the crew and my friends in Australia. So yeah, I do think the internet has expanded the possibilities of the distribution of films and entertainment.

Kickstart I want to get to the stage in my career where I can actually produce stuff where people would give me these kind of briefs – for me it would be merging entertainment and commercial media, and that’s pretty much where I think the whole future for advertising is going to lie. The Next Big Idea has been amazing for me. I definitely consider it the start of a career. I’m 23 years old and it’s an amazing opportunity to have your work being displayed all around the world. Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

Santiago and fellow finalist Morgan Christie attend The Next Big Idea premiere in Sydney, Australia. 71207416, Getty Images

If The Next Big Idea were a plate of food? Can’t be reduced to a single plate – it would be an extravagant buffet.