Going Down? Hyundai's <I>The Elevator</I> Employs VFX
February 8, 2019

Going Down? Hyundai's The Elevator Employs VFX

SANTA MONICA — Jamm (https://www.jammvisual.com) created the visual effects featured in Hyundai’s The Elevator Super Bowl spot. The commercial stars actor Jason Bateman, who portrays an elevator operator taking shoppers to the floor of their choice. As the elevator heads down, each floor offers less and less desirable options, including root canal, jury duty, and a six-hour flight in the middle seat. The lowest floor is designated for car shopping — a particuarly painful task.
The :60 spot was conceived by Innocean USA and directed by Jim Jenkins of O Positive. And while car shopping can be an unpleasant task, these shoppers used Hyundai’s Shopper Assurance program, causing Bateman to crank the elevator upwards to the pristine top floor, where they are greeted by their brand-new Hyundai Palisade.


The Jamm crew was brought on board early, working closely with director Jenkins to conceptualize the shoot. Using set extensions allowed them to marry the shots from within the elevator to the various environments it passes through.
 
“Having worked with Jamm once before on a very CG-heavy Hyundai global project, we had full confidence that they were the perfect partners for our Super Bowl spot,” says Jeff Bossin, Innocean USA’s group creative director. “Jamm seamlessly married our multiple practical sets with CG elements, which was essential to taking the look of the film to the next level. The end results were stunning.”
 
Jamm rebuilt the rotating elevator sign announcing each awkward scenario entirely in CG, and also enhanced the look and feel of the lift itself. Originally constructed of wood, the team rotoscoped specific areas of the elevator’s interior so the details would be given a rich bronze finish and appear more luxurious. Then, the team executed secondary color correction to give the elevator scenes a cohesive polished feel. On the contrasting side, Jamm intensified the desolate car lot’s unappealing nature by adding garish signs, along with trash and dust elements blowing in the wind.
 
For Hyundai grand, white “car heaven,” Jamm created the CG color background and intensified the architecture to make the location feel glorious and heavenly. The studio used Maya for animation, along with Houdini, with rendering performed in Mantra. Autodesk Flame was used for compositing and color correcting, and Nuke was used for rotoscoping.