Summary
An empty white room, a tick-tock and then… to the sound of Simone White’s gentle ‘Beep Beep Song’, a gleaming new car gradually appears, built bit by bit by an army of near-invisible technicians who leave behind them ghostly motion trails that criss-cross, blur and fade…
This is 'Construction', the ethereal new spot for Audi's R8 model,
which a team of Mill artists worked on with Partizan director
Olivier Gondry. The 90-second film is all about the painstaking
care and skill with which the R8 is hand-built (no wham-bam
as
Just as much behind-the-scenes care and skill went into the making
of the ad, which is a highly stylised interpretation of the
manufacturing process: The Mill team, led by Yourick Van Impe,
James Healy, John Leonti and shoot supervisor Hitesh Patel, spent
six weeks crafting the spot with a mix of Yo-Reveo, Flame, Maya and
Shake.
The 'fast-slow' effects - like a long-exposure shot of cars driving
along a highway - began with four days' initial filming in
Eisbach Studios in Germany, shooting in motion-controlled passes on
three different cameras as the car was assembled by 130 mechanic
passes- every one of which needed to generate a trail. The fact
that the cameras were always on the move meant the Mill team faced
the challenge of adding passes, and blending both 2D and 3D
elements, to achieve the layered end result. Each technician and
machine was shot on its own, and over time the overlapping effect
was built up, creating a feeling of playing tricks with space and
time.
'The concept of light trails was always the original brief the Mill
was working to,' says lead 3D animator John Leonti. 'It was a
difficult job due to the volume of work that needed to be 3D
rotoscoped… The 3D team created some tests in Maya to experiment
and research into light trails, geometry and shading. We needed to
make sure the trails didn't obscure the car or take attention away
from it.'
Finally, the Mill's New York-based Telecine operator Damien Van Der
Cruyssen set the grade with director Olivier Gondry. Back in
London, lead Telecine Adam Scott followed the grade through the
film. The result is a high-contrast look using clean whites to
deliver the clinical, high-tech feel the director wanted.
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