The Martin Agency, Richmond, Va., recently created a spot campaign for NASCAR that tells the story of a fantasy stock car race where great drivers from different eras compete against each other. The "Timeless" campaign combines archival images and material shot specifically for the project. Collapsing time and space, a team of artisans at post house R!OT Manhattan concocted complex visual effects to bring together the various drivers.
The campaign is aimed at both existing NASCAR fans and newcomers to the sport. "Pre-Race," "Parade Lap" and "Early Race," make up the first round of ads, with "Pit Stop," "Duel" and "Finish" to follow. The classic rock hit, "Long Time," performed by Boston, serves as the spots’ catchy score.
"[NASCAR’s] overall objective is to grow the fan base of the sport, but not at the expense of their current fans," says creative director Cliff Sorah, who also served as art director on the campaign. "You have to find the place where you are appealing to both; that’s a fine line to walk."
The campaign promotes the NASCAR Cup Series races, now sponsored by Nextel. (Winston had been the NASCAR sponsor since the early 1970s.) Part of going back in time for the spots was to focus on the history of the series. "We had a sense that it would be foolish not to pay some sort of homage to what had preceded this change as we usher in the era," Sorah explains. "We wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to lose folks."
The campaign launched in mid-February with "Pre-Race," an ad that features such racing legends as Richard Petty and "Fireball" Roberts, along with current stars like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon, all hanging out before the big race. We see the other older drivers in black and white, while the present-day racers are in color. Similarly, the crowd appears to be made up of a mix of old and new imagery. The ad ends on a high note. With the drivers revved up and ready to go, we hear what sounds like a vintage audio clip of an announcer exclaiming, "Gentlemen, start your engines!" The closing text reads, "NASCAR. Timeless. NASCAR Nextel Cup Series."
Sorah says NASCAR immediately embraced the campaign’s dream race concept. The first step toward realizing that idea was to find historical racing footage. Sorah, editor Matthew Wood and assistant editor Logan Hefflefinger of The Whitehouse, Santa Monica, as well as VFX supervisor/artist Tom McCullough of R!OT Manhattan, set out to find the material they needed. They combed through more than 150 hours of archival footage at the International Speedway Corporation in Daytona Beach, Fla., and NASCAR Images in Charlotte, N.C., to get just the right images.
Faced with an overwhelming amount of imagery dating back to the ’40s, the group decided to draw most of their material from footage shot at two racetracks, Daytona and Darlington International Raceway, Darlington, S.C. "We looked at every year’s footage that had our champions featured prominently and got good clean footage of them," relates Sorah.
McCullough points out that on a typical commercial, actual filming is based on a story that has already been worked out, but in this case, it was the opposite. "Since the footage already existed, we had to let our stories form themselves around what was available to us," he explains. "The material was drawn from various film and video formats—even some Super-8 home movies were transferred for the project. We pretty much dealt with every single format that’s out there."
The team, joined by lead visual effects artist Randie Swanberg of R!OT Manhattan, headed to Homestead-Miami Speedway to shoot additional footage. "Based on the two tracks that we pulled the bulk of the old footage from, we figured out angles," says Sorah. "We [had] picked [Daytona and Darlington] because they most closely resembled the track that we were going to shoot on."
In spots like "Early Race," we see cars from the past and present racing against each other. Director/DP Jeff Smith of Oasis Films, Charlotte, an experienced racing shooter, shot the new material, which included an actual race. Using stills of the archival imagery as reference points, Smith shot footage that would match up with the archival material. "He really did a great job of picking out the cars and staying steady on them and tracking them as we needed," Sorah comments.
At the same time, the R!OT Manhattan team snapped several hundred digital photographs to later be used as background plates for compositing.The next step was to send all of the footage to The Whitehouse for the offline session. The Martin Agency and The Whitehouse frequently collaborate on spot projects, and the agency was impressed with Wood’s reel. "[His] reel had tons of visual effects on it," says Sorah. "In addition, he knows how to tell a story. It was a mixture of having the sensibilities for digital compositing and being able to tell a story."
Back in New York, McCullough, Swanberg and several other artists at R!OT Manhattan put the pieces together, adjusted lighting and created a unique look for the six spots. Discreet’s Inferno and Henry were used for compositing and After Effects for rotoscoping. Photoshop was also employed. Not including research, R!OT Manhattan worked on the project for two and a half months.
Typically, when spots layer archival material and newly shot footage, an attempt is made to minimize their visual differences. But NASCAR wanted a different look for the "Timeless" campaign. "The client wanted the stuff to live in its original form, but logistically be involved in the shot," Swanberg relates. "[When] people use old and new footage, they try to do their best to integrate it and match the grains. We actually tried to depart from that and let each layer of the shot maintain its own integrity."
"It was a one-eighty from what most of our jobs are like," says McCullough, who notes that no CG was used on the project. "You get to see all the different characteristics of the different types of film and video being used. That really helped add a lot of character to it."
