Blinkink’s director Noah Harris and post house nineteentwenty are behind Red Brick Road’s new Suzuki spot Dodgems.
The ad shows off the safety features of the Suzuki models (the Ignis, new Swift and Vitara) as they swerve each other in the dodgems arena with the special features of each car preventing them from bumping into each other.
The vehicles were shot on a purpose-built dodgems course in-studio with 10 stunt drivers, whilst footage of the busy funfair was captured in an exterior set. Post-production studio nineteentwenty was tasked with merging the footage of the two locations and adding the final flashing touches to the fair background and the sparking dodgems arena.
Duncan Horn, VFX Supervisor at nineteentwenty, explains: “The set was dressed with some fun fair lighting and rides already but we wanted to enhance the effect and add bigger background rides to make it feel like a busy fairground. We inserted elements shot at the exterior funfair into the interior studio background. To ensure continuity, we built a 3D map of the set and the landmarks that would surround the three open sides of the dodgems arena. The shots were all camera tracked around this space, so we were able to easily match each shot to the correct background landmarks.”
In addition to enhancing the background shots, nineteentwenty also added some final 2D and 3D touches to the arena itself.
Horn adds: “The set wasn’t strong enough to hold the chicken wire roof that normally powers the dodgems arena, so we built this in, in post and added the trademark wire sparks as the cars whizz around. We also added smoke canons to the shot of the car doing donuts and various other elements.”
When working on the VFX nineteentwenty worked closely with Senior Colourist at Freefolk, Duncan Russell to seamlessly match the vfx and grade.
Jon Creamer
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