By Robert Goldrich

Earlier this month at the 2015 Pebble Beach Automotive Week, CP+B debuted two virtual reality (VR) experiences showcasing Infiniti’s newest concept cars.

“The Dream Road” marries live action footage and CGI elements to put the viewer in the driver’s seat of the Q60 Concept car. Folks can thus experience the performance of the next gen coupe on some of the world’s most exhilarating drives including Italy’s Stelvio Pass and the stunning Atlantic Ocean road in Norway. Infiniti teamed with CXC Simulations and professional drivers to replicate the real-world physics of every bump, acceleration and turn along the way. The custom simulator recreates G-forces and tilt, providing a fully immersive VR experience.

“From Pencil to Metal” features Infiniti executive design director Alfonso Albaisa taking viewers on a guided tour of the QX30 Concept car as it is built around them in three-dimensional space.

In addition to being experienced via a custom simulator with an Oculus Rift on display at Pebble Beach, both projects appear as YouTube pre roll ads (billed as being the first automotive brand to do so since Google launched 360 ads in July), and as a Google Cardboard mobile app called the Infiniti Driver’s Seat. This makes for a truly integrated campaign with multiple touchpoints, lending a new dimension to VR. The campaign spreads from in-person experiences at an event to a mobile app to YouTube 360 auto ads.

CP+B teamed with media agency OMD, live action and digital production company Tool of North America, VFX studio Luma Pictures, and music/sound house Q Department on the initiative. Steve Mapp of Tool directed the work. The VR sound was created by Q Department in tandem with its virtual reality sound technology company Mach 1.

For insights into VR and the Infiniti content, SHOOT connected with CP+B’s lead producers on the campaign: Jesse Jones, VP/group executive producer; and Deb Drumm, VP/executive integrated producer.

SHOOT: How did the campaign evolve to its current scope–from in-person experiences at the Pebble Beach Automotive Week event to a mobile app to the YouTube 360 ads? Was this large scope planned from the outset or did you just start with the venue experience and from there realized that it made sense to reach out to a wider audience? Or would the venue experience alone not have been enough to justify the cost, creative efforts?

Jesse Jones: Infiniti was looking for a show-stealing experience for guests at The Quail Motorsports Gathering and the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Usually these events are all about classic cars and brand heritage. But if you know anything about Infiniti, it’s that they’re not a brand that likes to focus on the past. Infiniti would rather busy themselves designing the future. Which is why our installations were centered around two immersive virtual reality experiences designed to be viewed with an Oculus and a custom-built racing simulator chair.

For the car enthusiasts that weren’t lucky enough to make it to Monterey this year we wanted a way to extend the experience beyond Pebble Beach Automotive Week. Very few people have an Oculus sitting around in their living room, but they do have a smartphone. So that insight led us to create the Driver’s Seat app that works with your smartphone and Google cardboard. This was an easy extension of the experience that didn’t add a ton of effort/cost to the overall project, and Google Cardboard is the next best thing to viewing the films in an expensive headset.

YouTube 360 was a great platform for us to increase our program reach without any of the barriers of downloading an app or having access to additional hardware. Watching a YouTube 360 video is just as easy for a user as watching any other YouTube video, but it has a little bit of the magic from our Oculus and Cardboard viewing experience because the user can change the perspective simply by moving their phone around or dragging the video from left to right as it’s playing. Just like the Google Cardboard app, it didn’t add a ton of cost/effort to the project, but it did enable us to reach a group of users we would have otherwise missed. The best way to experience Pencil to Metal or Dream Road is to view a 4K resolution video in an Oculus with headphones. But in reality, only a small percentage of people will be fortunate enough to see it that way. In less than a week of posting the films to YouTube, they had a million views.

SHOOT: Shed some light on your choices of talent? What drew you to director Steve Mapp and what he/Tool could bring to the campaign? Same for Q Department which handled music and sound? And VFX house Luma Pictures?

Jesse Jones: When we started looking at potential partners for this project, we wanted a single partner to help us execute the two films, interactive, and live event installation. It was really four different projects in one that needed to be created in a shared workflow. Tool is a proven choice for a lead production company because of their directorial roster, experience with Google Cardboard apps/VR, and ability to manage live installations.

Luma brought a fresh perspective and expertise to the project along with an incredibly talented team of artists. When you work with concept cars there are very few assets or references available to use. So every render had to be made from scratch and be created in a manner that could be re-purposed across several different spherical and flat mediums. The Luma crew had the unforgiving task of putting people behind the wheel of product accurate car that very few people in the word had ever seen the inside of.

Deb Drumm: One of the added benefits to the Oculus experience, as well as the app, is its rich binaural soundtrack. To have the sound change as you move your head around really completes the immersive experience. We wanted a single vendor that not only had binaural expertise, but could compose a really great original score, as well as an incredible sound design track. All of that led us to Q Department as the ideal sound partner.

SHOOT: What was (were) the biggest creative and/or technical challenge(s) that “The Dream Road” posed to you as a creative/producer?  What about “From Pencil to Metal”?

Deb Drumm:  The workflow process for 360° shooting is pretty cumbersome. To provide an upscale VR experience for the Infiniti audience meant we had to create everything at the highest resolution possible. Shooting 4k resolution at 60 fps with a single camera is one thing, but multiplying that by seven cameras provides quite a challenge. Everything is more difficult and time consuming, from data management and playback on set, to the transcoding and loading process during offline, to rendering during post.  

Jesse Jones: For the "Dream Road" Oculus experience it was very challenging to get the driver’s perspective and view out of the windshield exactly right. When you merge a spherical 360° live action video with a rectangular CAD file of a car, the distances between things can feel distorted. And because most people have actually sat behind the wheel of a car, the brain starts noticing something isn’t right. If not executed properly, it could be a disorienting experience.

SHOOT: What were the most important lessons you learned about VR based on your experiences on the two Infiniti projects?

Deb Drumm: The technology is really in its infancy but with bright, cooperative, talented partners that are excited about creating something new, anything is possible. The VR headset with headphones is an incredibly immersive experience. I really believe this is one of those moments in the history of technology–like the advent of cell phones or the Internet-that is a total game changer.

SHOOT: When is VR right for a campaign? What is the potential of VR in the advertising sector?

Jesse Jones: Virtual reality is right for a campaign when you know your target audience mindset is willing to try something different and has the tools and hardware readily available to them. This is why you currently see a lot of VR at auto shows, gaming conventions, and film festivals because they are environments that currently lend themselves to an immersive experience. Most people who tried the VR experiences at Pebble Beach had never put on a headset before, but they love cars and were willing to experience these new concept cars in an exciting way.

As we look to the future, products like Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear, Oculus Touch, and the dozens of other consumer VR devices flooding the market will help create more opportunities for brands to tell their story in a new immersive medium. In addition to VR experiences designed for headset viewing, there will also be growth in web-based 360° films. Agencies and brands have had the ability to create 360° video content for a while now, but the means of distributing that content is finally catching up. Both Facebook and YouTube recently started supporting 360° spherical video ads and that will naturally lead to more brands experimenting with 360° video as either standalone executions or a down-level, web-based extension of a headset experience.

Whether using a high end headset or at home with a cardboard, VR is typically a solo experience. And one thing we’ve seen is that technologies and experiences become a better fit for advertising as soon as they’re both magical (immersive VR), but also participatory and social. So be on the lookout for the first big social VR execution to really accelerate these experiences into the mainstream. 

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