Venice, Calif. - A new ad campaign from Team One imagines how the engineering of the new 2010 Lexus RX has reinvented the driving experience. Carl Erik Rinsch directed the :30 spots "City," "Assembled," and "Intersection," which feature fantastical visual metaphors brought to life by digital production studio Digital Domain.
Visual Effects supervisor Jonah Hall oversaw a 30-person team at Digital Domain. The company leveraged its knowledge in creating photoreal digital cars, as well as its expertise in modeling and animating detailed mechanical imagery. The project also brought some longtime collaborators together again, including Rinsch and cinematographer Claudio Miranda.
"City" opens on the RX sitting in traffic. But the vehicle has a secret weapon: XM real-time traffic monitoring that reveals driving conditions on the road ahead. Suddenly, massive cranes descend from the sky, picking up the offending traffic, and lifting buildings from their foundations so the driver can travel unimpeded to his final destination.
During the live-action shoot, the RX was shot sitting in downtown Los Angeles, surrounded by roughly 10 cars. Digital Domain augmented the traffic by adding an additional 60 all-digital vehicles. The artists also did rig removal on three cars shot in-camera as they were being suspended by cranes, added the metal claws and dozens more CG cars also being lifted by the giant machinery. And because silver cars are notorious for acting as mirrors when captured on camera, Digital Domain replaced the RX with a digital version at the end, just before the vehicle arrives at an independent music store, also constructed entirely in CG.
In "Assembled," Digital Domain created a CG conveyer belt that transports automobile parts through a man's house, neighborhood, and office, before robotic arms systematically assemble these elements--which originate not from a factory, but from out in the world--into the RX. "This spot posed a ninteresting challenge, because so much of the story lies in the conveyer belt we had to digitally create and insert into the scene," explains Hall. "When we showed Lexus the rough edit, they saw a series of empty rooms, the camera moving past an empty street and the in-camera RX at the end. We had to help them visualize the intricate choreography of the spot by doing a lot of animation tests and inserting them faster than usual. In the end, wewere able to effectively communicate the agency's vision to its client, and Lexus was very pleased with the results."
In "Intersection," a man in an RX drives along a darkened road and just as he's about to collide with an oncoming truck, time stops still, his car kicking up a swirl of tiny CG ficus leaves that suspend and sparkle in the air. Men and women dressed in black serve as the metaphor for the RX's innovative features that help the driver to see better at night. The people silently approach the time-frozen RX and gently push the oncoming vehicle away before guiding the driver safely along his way. Miranda shot the near-collision using a Phantom camera--the tool-of-choice for capturing HD footage at high frame rates--and Digital Domain seamlessly integrated the high-speed photography with the regular-speed photography of the actors, meshing the shots together so that they appeared to exist in the same take.
PRODUCTION CREDITS:
CLIENT: Lexus
PRODUCT: 2010 Lexus RX
AIR DATE for "Assembled": 02/16/09
AIR DATE for "City": 02/16/09
AIR DATE for "Intersection": 02/16/09
ADVERTISING AGENCY: Team One / El Segundo, CA
Chief Creative Officer: Chris Graves
Group Creative Director: Jon Pearce
Group Creative Director: Gavin Lester
Executive Producer: Jennifer Weinberg
Account Supervisor: Kristie Weston
PRODUCTION COMPANY: RSA Films, Inc. / Los Angeles, CA
Director: Carl Erik Rinsch
Executive Producer: Marjie Abrahams
Director or Photography: Claudio Miranda
Line Producer: Annie Johnson
1st Assistant Director: Howell Caldwell
Production Supervisor: Bryan Mitchell
ANIMATION & VISUAL EFFECTS: Digital Domain, Inc. / Venice, CA
President of Commercials, Exec. Producer: Ed Ulbrich
Executive Producer / Head of Production: Karen Anderson
Visual Effects Supervisor: Jonah Hall
CG Supervisor ¬ "Assembled": Ron Herbst
CG Supervisor ¬ "City": Greg Teegarden
VFX Producer: Chris Fieldhouse
VFX Coordinator: Stephanie Escobar
Previsualization: Simon Dunsdon
Flame Artist: Jonny Hicks
Flame Artist: Brian Boungiorno
Flame Artist: Dave Stern
Flame Artist: Chris DeCristo
Flame Artist Assistant: Matt Bramante
Nuke Compositor: Rafael Colon
Nuke Compositor: Sven Dreesbach
Nuke Compositor: Brian Smallwood
Nuke Compositor: Michael Morehouse
Digital Artist: Marc Perrera
Digital Artist: Tim Nassauer
Digital Artist: Jon Gourley
Digital Artist: Chris Norpchen
Digital Artist: Terry Naas
Digital Artist: Justin Lloyd
Digital Artist: Jeff Dierstein
Digital Artist: Adrian Dimond
Digital Artist: Ruel Smith
Houdini Artist: James Atkinson
Matte Paint: Wei Zheng
Roto Artist: Marianne Magne
Roto Artist: Mattaniah Yip
Roto Artist: Tom Piedmont
Roto Artist: Mike Boden
Roto Artist: David Wu
Roto Artist: Kanae Morton
Roto Artist: Keith Weilmuenster
On Set Tracker: Scott Edelstein
Integration Tracker: Som Shankar
Integration Tracker: Shelley Larocca Courte
EDITORIAL HOUSE: The Whitehouse / Santa Monica, CA
Editor: Rick Lawley
Producer: Joni Wright
MUSIC, SOUND DESIGN & AUDIO POST/MIX HOUSE
Location: HUM