Mackevision, a 3-D visualization company with offices in Germany and Pontiac, Michigan, was commissioned by Tribal DDB, of Hamburg, Germany, to produce the CGI materials for the launch of the Volkswagen Scirocco.
The real background environments were produced by John Wyland, exec VP and head of production, Mackevision, over two weeks. The production process included two days of filming and gathering the background plates, after which the Stuttgart facility constructed the CGI Scirocco vehicle, and seamlessly integrated the vehicle into the actual filmed backgrounds.
Wyland and his crew shot their material at the same date, time and locations as the Tribal DDB crew, a rare practice for most CGI houses. This process ensured that the scenes shot with a real Scirocco prototype would seamlessly intercut with the CGI Scirocco in the same location.
Included in the materials produced were a series of film sequences for a Web special and an interactive 360 degree Web model.
The interactive navigation tool, designed by Tribal DDB and created by Mackevision, is a glass cube in the center of the Volkswagen Web site, providing users with a 360 degree interactive view of the vehicle by dragging the mouse to activate chosen views and various animations. The Web special for the Scirocco provided Volkswagen with the flexibility to showcase its sport coupe through a CGI vehicle that was seamlessly set into actual filmed backgrounds.
Vehicle details and animations concerning design ("Style"), driving sensation ("Experience"), and power and performance ("Performance") were featured in three separately released sections of the Web special. Visitors to the website can navigate through these sections to acquire detailed information about the vehicle.
Under the "Style" section, users can select among four video clips relating to the design of the vehicle, including a video of the driving Scirocco in a city-light environment with rapid camera movements, and one of the interior, showing with the utmost detail interior detail, quality and equipment, all of which are computer generated.
In the "Experience" section, users can customize the Scirocco by changing its color. Once selected, the customized CGI vehicle is shown driving in an actual film clip, created in the locations in and around Las Vegas.
Users visiting the "Performance" section are able to select various video clips showing the Scirocco in action to showcase the technical highlights of the car's transmission, body and chassis. These scenes seamlessly combine the real and CGI vehicle integrated into actual filmed backgrounds, and are hardly discernible to the human eye.
The actual filming process by Mackevision included various clips at numerous locations for the Web specials, including the two-day filming process in the Las Vegas deserts. One unique filming tactic used by Mackevision was the attachment of a still camera to the hood of a car which was driven down the Las Vegas strip to capture the city effects and lighting, and later used to construct geometric shapes to represent the blurring lights (as seen in the background of the video in the "Style" section).
