The other day, Marc from Unleashed contacted us about this cool South African Suzuki Canon EOS 7D commercial –
and he’s gone into great detail about the making of the commercial – which really gives you more appreciation of how things like this are accomplished (especially for those of us like me who aren’t in the commercial business). Thanks for sending all of this in Marc!
From Marc:
Unleashed were commissioned to create a 30 second TV commercial for Suzuki South Africa. I wrote the following up to demonstrate the process from start to finish
The concept for the ad was to showcase each vehicle in the range and transition between them in a really eye catching style.
The ad would breakdown to about 80% footage and 20% motion graphics, my partner Ryan is the VFX genius at Unleashed, we spent a good few days working out how we were going to incorporate the footage with the graphics, and more importantly, how we needed to shoot the set up shots for him to animate – was a bit complicated but the end result is awesome!
Story Boards
I wanted to use strictly HDSLR’s for the shoot, client wasn’t convinced sure as all their previous ads ad been shot with film. South Africa is generally film biased, its a uphill battle to convince anyone to use anything different, especially if no one else has.
Penquin has a really cool creative director, his attitude was that if we are confident, he is confident. Awesome!
for inspiration by one of my twitter friends – thx @VisionWrangler – we watched the M3 viral ad and got some cool ideas from it.
Gear
Bodies:
2 x Canon EOS 7D
GoPro HD
The Go Pro HD produced some amazing shots, this camera is well worth the price, use as a crash cam, splash cam.. etc
Lenses:
Canon 16mm-35mm L F2.8
Canon 15mm-85mm Kit F2.8
Canon70mm-200mm IS F2.8
Sigma 30mm Prime F1.4
Sigma 50mm Prime F1.4
Tokina 11mm-16mm F2.8
The 16mm-35mm was the star of the show!
Grip stuff:
A Panther multi mount kit was utilized for the car mounted shots.
A 4m Jimmy Jib was used for tracking jib and standard jib shots.
Monitoring
Swit 7″ and 8″ HDMI and Composite HD/SDi monitors
Matte Box
Genus Matte Box
Support
Ca Vision Shoulder Brace / rails / follow focus
Genus Rails / Chroziel Follow Focus
Manfrotto 519/525
Secced 100mm Tripod
Filters
Syngh-Ray Vari ND
3 /6 /9 4×4 filters
Optic Flats
Polarizer 4×4 and Screw on
Audio
Zoom H4n
The Shoot
We shot over 2 days and a night.
The shoots all had their own challenges. The night shoot was really scary for the DOP and his Focus Puller, we had them strapped to the back of my van traveling over a bridge very late at night. Drunk students driving home were encountered on the bridge, lots of communication had to happen between crew to keep everyone safe. The local traffic department did not help close off the bridge as planned – thanks guys!
The race track scene with the Swift sport has to be my favorite, we used the Jib alot and had loads of fun skidding the car round the corners. My stunt driver couldnt get the hand brake turn right at the end, so i jumped in and nailed it.. its a given though that he would annihilate me around the track if we were racing for time.
4×4 Jimny, what a great location, the 4×4 track was right behind the track used for the Swift – Bonus! this shoot was a lot of fun, dirt, mud, long grass, awesome shots.
The Moto X track with the car, bike and plane was epic, we had ground to air comms with the pilot, i was directing the bike when to pull off to try and meet the plane mid air, 10 takes later and we had the shot! Professionals all around. My wife was drifting the SX4 on the Moto X track, she did a great job, and only almost ran me over once or twice.. Cindy was that intentional.
The family shots and Grand Vitara had a different set of challenges, too much light in some areas and not enough in others. We used large polyboards to bounce light and get the shots of the car under the palm leaves lit well. End result is pretty good, the car coming out of the shadows looks pretty good. Happy. The follow shots were as before, crane and operators strapped to the back of the truck and driven around a beautiful leafy area in Johannesburg.
These pics were taken by Penquins pro photographer, Martin – thx dude
And that was a wrap!
Lots of post production took place, the footage did not need much grading, drop blacks, bit of saturation – we shot, very flat. Ryan created the zoom through transitions, they were made up from stills and footage and comped together in After Effects.
Simon from Zendell.biz created a completely custom one off track for the ad, live musicians and vocal were recorded to keep with the “way of life” payoff line.
The client is completely over the moon with the end result! They now do not see the point of using film and only want to use HDSLR going forward.. result!
Suzuki 60sec version from dialate Unleashed on Vimeo.
Suzuki 30sec commercial from dialate Unleashed on Vimeo.
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