ARCHIVEOnePlus 9RT Turns a Smartphone Launch Into a Cinematic Action Film
OnePlus 9RT's 2022 brand film, produced by Sweetshop Shanghai and published in China in January 2022, is a stunt-driven action micro movie that presents the device's core features — including its 120Hz display and Snapdragon 888 processor — through dramatic dialogue and narrative rather than conventional product demonstration.
The campaign arrives at a precise moment in the OnePlus product calendar. The OnePlus 9RT launched in China on October 19, 2021, according to gizchina.com, positioning the device in the premium upper-midrange segment of the country's intensely competitive smartphone market. The brand film followed in January 2022, timed to sustain momentum and carry the product narrative into a new year. In the Chinese market, where visual spectacle and platform-native storytelling command audience attention, the decision to frame a mobile device launch as a genre film signals a deliberate creative escalation beyond the category norm.
Written and directed by Sebastien Guy, the production deploys fast cars, stunt sequences, and high-tech gadgets as the dramatic language through which the OnePlus 9RT's specifications are communicated. Rather than interrupting the narrative to list features, the script embeds product attributes into the action itself — a structural choice that serves both entertainment and persuasion simultaneously. The campaign contains a single film asset and is classified under the Electronics and Technology category. Clapboard rates this campaign 69 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition in execution within a format that remains relatively rare in the smartphone advertising category across China and globally.
ARCHIVEOnePlus positions the 9RT as a device for consumers who equate performance with identity. In China, the brand competes directly against Xiaomi and OPPO — both of which command significant shares of the upper-midrange segment — as well as against the broader premium tier anchored by Apple and Samsung. According to IDC, global smartphone shipments fell by approximately 11.3% year over year in 2022 to around 1.205 billion units, with the Chinese market contributing substantially to that contraction. Against this backdrop of declining volumes, differentiation through creative storytelling carries amplified strategic weight.
Xiaomi recorded approximately 153.1 million global shipments in 2022, representing a 12.7% market share, according to IDC — a scale that affords the brand considerable marketing reach in China. OPPO, OnePlus's parent company under BBK Electronics, recorded approximately 103.3 million shipments in the same period, according to IDC. OnePlus operates as a distinct brand identity within that corporate structure, targeting younger, digitally native consumers who expect technology advertising to reflect the speed and visual ambition of the products themselves.
The action micro-movie format addresses that expectation directly. By adopting the visual grammar of the action genre — stunt choreography, rapid cutting, fast cars — the campaign aligns the OnePlus 9RT with a broader cultural vocabulary that resonates with tech-savvy audiences in China who consume both global cinema and platform-native short-form content. Sebastien Guy's original brief, according to adobomagazine.com, centred on a laboratory technician testing concept; Guy rewrote it into a narrative-driven film while retaining the product's core specifications as the engine of the story. This strategic pivot from demonstration to drama is the campaign's defining insight.
Sebastien Guy wrote and directed the OnePlus 9RT brand film for Sweetshop Shanghai. The production was filmed in Kyiv over three days — two days on location and one in studio — with line production services provided by The Martini Shot, according to adobomagazine.com. The international scope of the cast is notable: actors from South Africa, Poland, and Ukraine appear in the film, lending the production a cosmopolitan texture that supports OnePlus's positioning as a globally minded technology brand, even as the campaign targets the China market specifically.
The cinematography was handled by Anton Fursa, whose work as director of photography gives the film a high-gloss, action-cinema visual register consistent with the dramatic stunt sequences the script demands. Post-production was managed by O Five Studio for online work, with colourist Bernie Chen shaping the film's final visual tone. The editing team divided responsibilities across the project: Noam Weissman cut both the main film and a companion Buds film, while Adam Hussey edited the teaser, according to adobomagazine.com.
Music composition for the OnePlus 9RT campaign was handled by Lorenzo Piggici, whose score supports the action tempo of the stunt scenes and fast-car sequences. The production was coordinated through producer April Lee, with Vadim Dusman serving as line producer and Tanya Shevchuk as an additional producer, according to adobomagazine.com. The full crew assembly reflects the scale of ambition Sweetshop Shanghai brought to what might otherwise have been a standard electronics product film. The scripting mechanism — embedding device specifications such as the 120Hz display and Snapdragon 888 processor into dialogue between characters — allows the film to function simultaneously as entertainment and as a precise product communication vehicle for the Chinese electronics market.
No independently verified performance data specific to the OnePlus 9RT brand film's reach or media results in China is publicly available at this time. However, structural indicators within the campaign point to meaningful effectiveness. A companion asset — the OnePlus Buds Z2 film produced under the same creative framework — recorded 41,768 views, 915 likes, and 46 comments on YouTube, according to Clapboard's editorial records. While this figure reflects a secondary asset on a platform with limited penetration in China, it offers a signal of the creative's appeal to the global OnePlus audience beyond the campaign's primary market.
The structural effectiveness of the OnePlus 9RT micro-movie format rests on its integration of product specification into narrative action. By building the 120Hz display and Snapdragon 888 processor into the script's dialogue rather than isolating them as feature callouts, the campaign sustains viewer engagement across a longer runtime than a conventional smartphone advertisement typically commands. This approach reduces the cognitive friction between entertainment and persuasion — a known driver of brand recall in technology advertising. The action genre framing, executed with a professional international cast and a three-day shoot in Kyiv, signals production investment commensurate with OnePlus's premium-adjacent positioning in China's upper-midrange smartphone segment. Clapboard scores the OnePlus 9RT campaign 69 out of 100, recognising its creative ambition and disciplined craft while noting the inherent challenge of sustaining product clarity across a heavily stylised narrative format.
The OnePlus 9RT brand film is an action micro-movie produced by Sweetshop Shanghai and published in China in January 2022. Written and directed by Sebastien Guy, it presents the device's features through dramatic stunt scenes and dialogue rather than conventional product demonstration, targeting tech-savvy consumers in the Chinese smartphone market.
Sebastien Guy directed and wrote the OnePlus 9RT brand film for Sweetshop Shanghai. Guy also rewrote the original brief — initially centred on a laboratory testing concept — into a narrative-driven action film, according to adobomagazine.com. The film was shot in Kyiv over three days with cinematography by Anton Fursa.
The OnePlus 9RT brand film was shot in Kyiv over three days by line production company The Martini Shot, according to adobomagazine.com. The campaign was published in China in January 2022, following the OnePlus 9RT's China device launch on October 19, 2021, as reported by gizchina.com.
The OnePlus 9RT campaign highlights the device's 120Hz display and Snapdragon 888 processor, according to androidauthority.com. These specifications are embedded into character dialogue within the action micro-movie format rather than presented as standalone feature callouts, allowing the film to communicate product attributes without interrupting the dramatic narrative.
Clapboard rates the OnePlus 9RT campaign 69 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative ambition — its action micro-movie format, international production team, and disciplined scripting — alongside the inherent challenge of maintaining product clarity within a heavily stylised cinematic narrative in China's competitive electronics market.
The OnePlus 9RT campaign differentiates from rivals such as Xiaomi — which recorded approximately 153.1 million global shipments in 2022 according to IDC — by adopting a cinematic action format rather than specification-led advertising. This creative strategy targets younger, digitally native consumers in China who respond to visually compelling storytelling over conventional product demonstration.
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