At www.vwfeatures.com, which recently won a Cyber Lion Award Gold at Cannes, consumers can build their own Volkswagen Jettas and crash test them with everything from a rhinoceros to a chicken truck or create Rabbit models and watch them fall in love and breed. This is not the typical ho-hum “build your own” function on car manufacturers’ Web sites, and that’s exactly what Crispin + Porter Bogusky. Miami, and Digital Domain, Venice, Calif., wanted.
The Crispin team believed the “build your own” category was an underutilized marketing opportunity where more compelling, brand appropriate imagery and messaging could further drive pre-existing TV branding and build relationships between consumers and the cars.
“Every major car manufacturer has a Web site, and for the most part those Web sites tend to be a very clinical display of the various models the manufacturers make. They tend not to resonate with the advertising brand. Or you can click and see the TV commercial on the Web site, but it’s not what it could be,” said Ed Ulbrich, senior VP of production/executive producer at Digital Domain.
“I was literally blown away when we got the brief for the Volkswagen GTI, which has become the building block of vwfeatures.com. It’s revolutionary, and it’s going to set the new gold standard. Crispin has set the bar now and we are honored to be part of it.”
Digital Domain’s visual effects techniques allow customers to “build” cars, which are placed into “Webisodes.” But depending on how you design your car, you get a different experience–so it’s a more interactive experience than a regular Webisode is capable of.
“This is about designing the car and taking that rather mundane experience that isn’t very satisfying into a very strategic way to connect with customers and entertain them, and deliver a consistent message and imagery to the experience they’ve already had of that vehicle, which brought them to the Web site in the first place,” relates Ulbrich.
After choosing the model, body, interior, transmission, wheels and accessories for their Jetta, consumers can choose from eight different ways to crash it. These films correspond with VW’s “Safe Happens” campaign featuring Jettas getting into accidents but keeping their passengers unharmed. The scenes take place in a crash lab and are crafted to look like research footage using multiple camera angles to study the accident.
In the case of the Rabbit, visitors can customize their vehicle but instead of crashing it, they can choose a mate for it and send them both off on a flirtatious ride that culminates with them “parking.” A few seconds later, a family tree pops up.
Because of all the options available through this customized filmmaking experience, this undertaking would be unrealistic without Digital Domain’s visual effects. It would require hundreds of cars and shooting each scene hundreds of times. Instead, the company created the car models, crash test site, animals and objects entirely in CG. From there it animated the scenes and, using proprietary technology, placed each car into the scenes to create the hundreds of possibilities necessary.
“We set up creative elements for one shot and then in the background we have procedures that go out and render all the other various configurations just like the first one,” explained Ulbrich.
He said the most challenging part of the project was having to deploy a substantial amount of Digital Domain’s fire power and arsenal to execute the films because they had to be done in just a few weeks.
“It’s like doing 50 commercials on one tenth of the schedule we would normally get. Logistically it is a substantial endeavor,” Ulbrich related. “It’s about redeploying your resources and deciding for this period of time this project is going to get an atypically large percentage of our computer power. …That’s the benefit of a large environment with significant rendering capacity.”
Looking ahead, Ulbrich says the Web site will continue to grow with more models and describes this period as a “cool time in automotive advertising.
“We are watching in general considerable amounts of money being spent on the Web for automotive. We’re seeing budgets that are not unlike commercial budgets. It’s an exciting time.”
Hollywood’s Oscar Season Turns Into A Pledge Drive In Midst Of L.A. Wildfires
When the Palisades Fire broke out in Los Angeles last Tuesday, Hollywood's awards season was in full swing. The Golden Globes had transpired less than 48 hours earlier and a series of splashy awards banquets followed in the days after.
But the enormity of the destruction in Southern California has quickly snuffed out all festiveness in the movie industry's high season of celebration. At one point, the flames even encroached on the hillside above the Dolby Theatre, the home of the Academy Awards.
The fires have struck at the very heart of a movie industry still trying to stabilize itself after years of pandemic, labor turmoil and technological upheaval. Not for the first time this decade, the Oscars are facing the question of: Should the show go on? And if it does, what do they mean now?
"With ALL due respect during Hollywood's season of celebration, I hope any of the networks televising the upcoming awards will seriously consider NOT televising them and donating the revenue they would have gathered to victims of the fires and the firefighters," "Hacks" star Jean Smart, a recent Globe winner, wrote on Instagram.
The Oscars remain as scheduled, but it's certain that they will be transformed due to the wildfires, and that most of the red-carpet pomp that typically stretches between now and then will be curtailed if not altogether canceled. With so many left without a home by the fires, there's scant appetite for the usual self-congratulatory parades of the season.
Focus has turned, instead, to what the Oscars might symbolize for a traumatized Los Angeles. The Oscars have never meant less, but, at the same time, they might be more important than ever as a beacon of perseverance for the reeling movie capital.
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