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R!OT Manhattan Creates 'Timeless' NASCAR Campaign

NASCAR fans are guaranteed all the excitement they require with the "NASCAR Timeless Campaign," featuring six 30-second ads that merge more than 50 years of NASCAR lore.

The Martin Agency along with The Whitehouse Post and R!OT Manhattan created a new campaign that celebrates the sport's rich history by bringing together today's best drivers with legendary heroes of the past. The campaign integrates images of cars and drivers spanning more than a half-century of racing so that they all appear to be part of the same event. Vintage cars from the '40s course alongside racing vehicles from the '50s, '60s and succeeding decades down to current models. Racing greats such as "Fireball" Roberts, Ned Jarrett, Richard "The King" Petty, Bobby Allison and David Pearson roar along the track, vying for first place position and fans of each decade love every second of it.

Each of the six spots, although independent of one another, weave together a larger story that runs from pre-race preparations through the finish line. FOREPLAY/LONG TIME the '70s anthem by the group Boston keeps the excitement and energy alive throughout each spot.

"Our objective was simple: to make NASCAR fans feel good," said Martin Agency art director/cd Cliff Sorah. Sorah added that the purpose of the campaign is also to introduce Nextel as the new title sponsor of NASCAR events and to usher in a new chapter to the sports' rich history. "NASCAR, as much as any sport, has a storied past and a cast of colorful characters," he said. "We felt that the best way to celebrate that heritage was to bring those old and new heroes together."

The imagery used in the spots was drawn primarily from NASCAR's own archives. Source materials included 35mm film, videotape shot in the 1960s and 70s, as well as 16mm and Super 8mm film from earlier eras. The agency even got a hold of home movie footage that had never before been publicly aired.

The agency's creative team, along with The Whitehouse Post editor Matthew Wood and R!OT Manhattan's Tom McCullough and Randie Swanberg, combed through 150 hours of historical film dating from 1948 through 2000 to find elements that could be combined and used to tell the story. The edited research was about twenty hours of footage.

Once key elements were selected and storylines roughed out, the team went into production employing Oasis Films to shoot background footage at a Miami area racetrack. "From our research, we determined what we needed to shoot," said Martin Agency copywriter Joe Lawson. "We knew what backgrounds we wanted and what angles and perspectives to shoot in creating an authentic NASCAR feel."

Matthew Wood and assistant Logan Hefflefinger at The Whitehouse Post put together rough cuts of the six spots, undertaking the laborious task of determining how all the pieces of the puzzles were going to fit together.

Final post work at R!OT required the extensive work of Inferno, Henry and After Effects artists. Swanberg and McCullough worked on more than 150 effects shots applying subtle light and shading, creating specific film grains, adjusting colors, piecing cars together, tweaking perspectives and reworking timing to make materials gleaned from wildly different media appear to be part of the same scenes. "We tried to make the composites seem natural while retaining the stylistic characteristics that represented different points in the past," explained McCullough. "Achieving the perfect balance was more art than science and often came down to what felt right."

Swanberg compared one shot from the PRE-RACE ad, showing a pool of reporters, to the cover of the Beatles album SGT. PEPPER'S LONELYHEARTS CLUB BAND. "There are at least six layers in that one shot with reporters from the '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s," Swanberg said. "It includes not only a mix of color and black & white images, it blends very noisy, grainy images with pristine, modern elements."

While acknowledging the lengthy and complicated work required to execute the spots, Lawson noted that their success rests on a simple idea. "The thought of matching up stars from different eras is a common fantasy among all sports fans, and in this case, all the key players are there."

R!OT Manhattan credits include: Randie Swanberg, lead visual effects artist; Tom McCullough, vfx supervisor/artist; Julie Watkins, Matt Reilly, Jay Tilin, vfx artists; Luis Ribeiro, exec producer/producer; Alison Shields, Luciano DiGeronimo and Robert Lopuski, After Effects artists; Connie Griffin, managing director.

R!OT Manhattan is located at 545 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10017.

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Bill Desowitz, former editor of VFXWorld, is currently the Crafts Editor of IndieWire.