ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.03 - JUNE 2000

100% Digital Cars Are Up To Speed
(continued from page 1)

Proving Digital Might
Right after "Trampoline," BBD&O produced a live-action spot entitled "Time" to show off the new line of Dodge vehicles including the Viper GTS, a sleek, high-powered sports car. All the vehicles were the same color -- red -- so one could dissolve into the other as it passed through a glass wall. But the red Viper also had two white racing stripes. When Dodge decided not to produce Vipers with stripes, the agency had to find a way to remove them. But it was impossible to paint the stripes out. Pleased with the results of "Trampoline," they once again called on Digital Domain, which in turn did away with the original Viper completely and replaced it with a digital one. BBD&O loved it. When they decided to do "Time 2," adding the Durango and the Intrepid to the original spot, they had Digital Domain do the honors rather than incur the expense of shooting the new models.

"That was really the break-through usage of digital cars in advertising," Barba emphasizes. "That got them [ad agencies] to buy that we could do fully photo-real digital cars, and from then on we've been pitching the idea."

Next came the two impressive Pontiac Grand Am spots, "Metal City" and "Steel Desert," produced by D'Arcy, Massius, Benton and Bowles, which have a Grand Am maneuvering deftly through a virtual all-metal environment. The idea was to show that the Grand Am was built stronger and tougher and had more maneuverability than ever before.

In "Metal City," it’s metal that’s mighty! © General Motors. Images courtesy of Digital Domain (Pontiac).

"Last year's Grand Am was a brand new vehicle," explains Mark Zapico, group creative director at DMB&B. "It was really new from the ground up. It had a space frame design made out of hydroformed steel. It was built to be a lot more rigid and a lot stronger [than previous models]. So the idea of the steel world manifested itself out of the brand and the product, itself. We wanted a way to truly bring the steel landscapes to life."

Working with D2
Why did the agency decide to go all digital and why did they choose Digital Domain?

"It was not an easy decision," Zapico admits on both counts. As to the first question, the agency had seen a lot of digital cars, but they were static. They had not seen a digital car move along the road like a photo-real one. What changed their minds? Again, the answer was the brand, itself, the Grand Am. According to Zapico, "Since the technology for Grand Am was to build a car that was cutting edge it was worth a try to see if we could make digital cars work."

As to the second question, the agency team had to educate themselves about the world of digital production. They looked at the work of several digital houses including Digital Domain. "After talking with them [Digital Domain] a number of times, we felt confident that the full brunt of their artists, animators and designers could bring it to life, and we had the backing of our clients. Digital Domain had done work before for General Motors...So, we felt it was a risk worth taking," continues Zapico.

DMB&B sent an agency team to Los Angeles to work closely with Digital Domain and their in-house director, Ray Giarratana. And the results were very encouraging. "We put every one of our best people on it," Giarratana states, "...and when it was all said and done, the clients got something that really showed off their product well and in a very interesting manner that was different in many ways."

From the very start, Giarratana felt to achieve the creativity demanded in the clients' storyboard the spots would have to be produced digitally. But while creativity may be enhanced using digital effects, what about quality? Besides putting their top people on the spot, to insure a quality equal to live-action, they hired Bill Bennett, a top live-action director of photography for auto commercials, to consult with Ray and Eric and their team. They wanted to be able to match the angles that have proven over the years to show an automobile at its finest.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an e-mail to editor@awn.com.