Honda CR-V spot inspired by a weather app design

Posted on 05. Feb, 2011 by Martin Biela in Out of the Box, Production

Yesterday got an email from Roger Darnell from Brand New School. Quiet amazing for us to get the first email by a production company and design studio to post about their stuff. So feel free to send us your latest websites, campaigns etc. We really love that.

The agency’s creative brief called for Brand New School’s Director Ben and his colleagues to use the storytelling framework of a five-day weather forecast to demonstrate the CR-V’s driving capabilities under different conditions. For me as a digital guy it’s really interesting to see how the design of websites and in the case of the ending of Honda’s CR-V Forecast, how Widget and iPhone App Design inspires concept’s of TVC’s.

For this project, Ben and his colleagues, including director of photography Bill Bennett, planned out a very ambitious single-day live-action shoot in and around California’s Santa Ynez Airport. “We really wanted to grab the audience’s attention instantly with the beauty and sophistication of the spot,” Ben began. “To achieve that, we opted for a look that’s both real and graphic, both stylized and photoreal… a good mixture of fact and fantasy. On location, we wet down the road, and had practical snow on it as well… then we composited partly realistic and partly graphic rain and snow in the finished shots. The sunny environment in the original plate we shot was also replaced with different CG environments to match the different weather conditions.”

On location, the BNS team used the ARRI Alexa digital camera system to capture HD source footage. Also, a crane car called The Edge System from Performance Filmworks allowed the crew to capture the moving vehicle from various angles as it appeared in different situations at and near the picturesque airport.

For BNS VFX supervisor Vadim Turchin and many studio artists, the first steps in post were to track the live-action scenes and rotoscope the background and the CR-V. A matte painting was created for the background, which was projected onto 3D geometry in Maya. All the elements were then put together in After Effects, along with additional plates, particle effects, and initial color correction. Final color was handled in Autodesk Flame.

The advertising agency for Honda’s CR-V Forecast spot is RPA. Who is also the agency behind for one of the best documercial corporate series production around. Honda’s Power of Dreams. See the 2088 Mobility, just amazing stuff:

And because it’s super bowl time ( also when the project was for monday night football) , check out the amazing interactive installation from BNS:

Tags: Documercial, Honda, Interactive Installation, iPhone