Automobiles may not be living things, but most of us treat them as if they were. We talk to them, swear at them, name them, praise and encourage them, take pictures of them and dress them up. From Herbie, the Love Bug to Christine, movies have given life to cars, and from Knight Rider to The Dukes of Hazzard, television programs have placed them in starring roles. Although the life of an automobile is only what we give it, a recent spot for Mercedes Benz gives it an afterlife, too.
"Reincarnation" is a standout commercial in a series of 11 new spots for Mercedes-Benz. Creatives at Merkley Newman Harty and Partners (MNH), New York, chose not to dwell on winding autobahn roads and 180-degree controlled spins, but rather on the major occasions in a car’s "life." The first day with a new family, a brush with the law, and a tender moment of first love in the front seat are among many such episodes depicted in "Reincarnation," conceived by MNH art director Dawn McCarthy and copywriter Laura Fegley. Directors rad-ish—a.k.a. the directing team of Moritz Friedel and Christoph Chrudimak, two Austrian directors who work stateside via bicoastal Go Film—gave the :60 the dreamy quality it needed. Visual effects house Quiet Man and edit facility Final Cut, both based in New York, provided the flow and continuity for more than two dozen transitions and edits.
The spot opens in an automobile graveyard. A crane swings a Mercedes into position inside the jaws of a crushing machine. The weathered car has obviously served its purpose on this earth, but the crusher operator can’t watch—reluctant to witness the inevitable end of any Mercedes. As the top of the crusher descends, the point of view moves to the car’s interior. We look out over the dashboard while the windshield violently cracks from the pressure. Instantly, a white light washes over the scene.
We are carried back to the car’s first memory—the day it was a gift from husband to wife. A red bow on the hood is partly visible as the young wife hugs the strapping husband in a scene from the early 1960s. The shot of the couple fades, into a drive along a country road, then an automated car wash fades in (perhaps the car’s first bath?). From here, it is apparent that we are witnessing the life of a car flashing before its "eyes." The scenes continue to flow quickly, but steadily: A little boy crawls mischievously over the hood, a basketball nearly hits the windshield after a teenaged boy misjudges a pass, a cop places a parking ticket under the wiper, "4 SALE" materializes on the glass and a man wipes away some dust to peer inside.
All told, 17 memories mesh to form the lifetime of this Mercedes—until, at last, the car is again awash in white light. Details of a sterile, hospital-like environment come into focus and a man in a lab coat routinely makes some checks around the windshield. For the first time since the beginning of the spot, an exterior shot of the car is seen, but the old soul has assumed the new body of one of the latest C-Class automobiles. The reincarnated car rolls through the final check in the assembly line and drives out to join its fellows, each given new life. The voiceover, by actor Joe Mantegna, says, "The outside may change, but the soul remains the same."
The concept emerged from Mercedes’ efforts to change the perception of its C-Class. "The biggest concern for Mercedes regarding this spot was that the C-Class is not seen as a real Mercedes-Benz. People call it the ‘Baby-Benz’ because it is a little cheaper," Fegley explained. "So, how do we attach the heritage of the brand to the C-Class?" From that question, the reincarnation solution emerged.
While many product ads in the past have tried to use standing reputations for quality and performance to raise the perceived value of particular models and brands, most haven’t touched the audience on the same kind of emotional level that "Reincarnation" does. "It was nice to be able to do a commercial that was real in showing the entire life of a car, not just as a brand-new car," stated McCarthy. "Instead, to just see how it was treated like a real car—going through the stages of being owned by different people, the various experiences and ultimately being crushed. That was a big thing for Mercedes to swallow—seeing the car crushed. But it had a long life."
McCarthy’s comments—similar to those commonly made about the passing of loved ones—reflect how people, especially Americans, feel about their cars. She later confessed to her own sad parting with a former car, and that story makes it easy to see how the "Reincarnation" concept emerged. "I am guilty of talking to my car," she acknowledged. "I had to sell my car before I moved to New York and I sold it to a smoker. Before I handed the car over I got inside and said, ‘I’m really sorry. There is going to be a lot of smoke inhalation over the next couple of years.’ "
Although Fegley did not admit to getting verbal with any of her cars, she did recognize the value of that kind of thinking for a commercial project: "I think the better spots usually involve something that takes a little leap over logic and throws some random element in."
The reincarnation motif is a delicate one, and might have ended up little more than a gimmick for the spot if it had not been for the creative execution of rad-ish and the shared vision of everyone working on the spot.
"Rad-ish was consumed by this project," said Robert Wherry, co-executive producer with Jonathan Weinstein for "Reincarnation" at Go Film. "They thought it was some of the best creative they had ever seen. [Rad-ish] brought so much to the party. It was constantly evolving, constantly changing, and getting better and better all the time."
Since only a second or two could be devoted to each vignette, a number of visual tricks were employed to smooth out the transitions and make time appear to pass slowly. Rad-ish worked closely with the artists at Quiet Man to make the scenes work. "A lot of the scenes overlapped," explained Johnnie Semerad, Quiet Man’s visual effects supervisor/Inferno artist, "so you are really looking at two of the shots at the same time—giving them each the time that they needed to stay up. So while it was only a second and a half of footage, it was really more like three seconds, because you saw two of them at the same time." Semerad explained how characters were isolated on the video in order to maintain the timing and flow of the spot but still keep certain desired elements up for longer periods. "When the basketball player runs up, we [isolated] him so we could [get his reaction]. … Sometimes we faded up half the screen and then brought up the other half. Like when the guy is looking at the "4 SALE" sign, he fades up, and then the girl [washing the car] fades up on the other side. They are there together for a little bit, then she takes over the scene."
Considering that a total of 17 scenes needed to be shot, each with its own place in history and set of circumstances, four days of shooting was going to be tight. "Their thinking was so efficient and so creative at the same time," said McCarthy of the directing duo. "We had to use the same location in multiple ways. So we would use the garage of one house, then shoot from the driveway of the same house from a different direction. [Rad-ish] had multiple shoots going on at the same time. They’d have one car set up down the street and one car set up in a garage. We got a lot more shots than I think we had ever hoped to. I think we used almost every scene."
This attention to detail became vital for the spot’s credibility. Since the car moved through four decades, two owners and multiple drivers, the creative team at MNH collaborated with rad-ish to achieve as much authenticity as possible. "We were trying to get into the head of the car and figure out what would be memorable for the car," recalled McCarthy. "In each shot there is something different about the dashboard—beads hanging from the mirror change to a ski pass. They are really subtle details, but I think they make it feel like the car is going through time and through different owners."
"There was a lot of figuring out what can happen in one era that will link really nicely with the next one," Fegley added. "It was a really nice collaborative process with Moritz and Christoph."
The final touch was the music, done by Human Music & Sound Design, New York. The music is intrinsic to the ad’s illusion of slow pacing. What’s most impressive is that the music was done entirely at the last minute. "[Human] rescued us at the last hour," admitted Fegley. "We weren’t quite sure what we were going to do with the music. Once we figured out the tone that we wanted, they were great. They had several different musicians working on it at the same time, and we ended up working with Morgan Visconti [composer/ sound designer]. I think they cracked it in a night or two."
Shared sentimentality for cars was a welcome side effect that not only unites the audience, but served to bond everyone who worked on "Reincarnation." Fegley spoke as if the end product had already been playing in the heads of the editor (Final Cut’s Kirk Baxter), director, creatives and visual effects artists long before it was completed. "While we were shooting, we had such a good feeling of how everything was going to connect that when we saw the rough cut, it was exactly what we all wanted it to be."
