WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA. – Recently a new commercial started appearing internationally for the new Volvo Cross Country. The thirty-second spot entitled “Moon” features the moonlit trek of a new Volvo
Cross Country across salt flats near a lake, with silhouetted mountains
framing a star-lit sky.
Viewers may be surprised to note that director
Lance Acord of New York’s Park Pictures shot the travelling car footage
during the daytime, relying on West Hollywood-based visual effects and
broadcast design company A52 to color-grade the footage and composite-in and effect all the other elements – including sky, mountain textures, water and
moon, as well as the hero car’s head and tail lights and its overall
lighting, shadowing and reflections.
“Every aspect of what you see in the finished spot has been touched and
effected by our artists in some way,” explained A52’s project producer
Leighton Greer, who participated in the location production together with
A52’s project visual effects supervisor Dan Sumpter.
“Considering how much we had to accomplish in a limited amount of time,
having the technical expertise from A52’s team on the set was critical to
the success of this shoot,” said agency producer Sarah Cole of Messner
Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer/Euro RSCG. “During production, I know
that Dan and Leighton were conferring constantly with the director to make
adjustments so that we’d have exactly what we needed for the finished
spots.”
“It was a very well-planned and efficient shoot,” said A52’s Dan Sumpter.
“We shot five commercials in a matter of days and really got everything we
needed.”
“For the ‘Moon’ spot,” Sumpter continued, “I mostly used a combination of
the grading tools and the tracker in Henry Infinity. The moon reflection
shot at the end was aided by some of the tools Inferno has for displacing
elements in a watery fashion, and we actually built an articulated matte in
the Flame for one other shot. Also, since the Flame has a slightly more
sophisticated ability to move things in three dimensions, it fell upon Flame
artist Mark Loso to add a water element into the second-to-last shot. Other
than that, 95% of the grading and all of the compositing was done in
Infinity.”
Finally, Sumpter summarized A52’s sentiments on the many strengths of the
campaign’s creative team. “They obviously had a very strong idea as to what
they wanted. Everything was very well scripted and photographed – but I
think they also took every opportunity to use the post process to add to the
finished spots.”
Other spots in the campaign include :30s entitled “Airplane,” “Chair,”
“Nest” and “Security.”
In addition to Sarah Cole, MVBMS’s campaign creative team also included
creative director/copywriter Michael Feinberg, senior art director Yvonne
Desanti, partner/creative director Michael Lee and partner/executive
producer Tom Meloth. The team from the agency’s in-house Berwyn Editorial
included post producer Maria Santiago, supervising editor Scott Gibney,
editor Jeff Ferruzzo and assistant editor Jerome Wilson.
A52’s project team for “Moon” was led by managing director and executive
producer Liz Roewe and producer Leighton Greer, and also included visual
effects supervisor Dan Sumpter, Flame artists Cari Chadwick and Mark Loso
and online editor Scott Johnson.
Production was overseen by Park Pictures’ executive producers Jackie Kelman
Bisbee and Jonna Mattingly and also included producer Deannie O’Neil and
production designer K. K. Barett.
“Moon” features the song “Polaris” from Nortec Collective and the voiceover
talents of Donald Sutherland.
