Motel 6 and agency The Richards Group recently joined forces with production company King and Country (K&C) to create a :30 that debuted as the centerpiece of the agency’s cross-media campaign celebrating the brand’s 50th anniversary.
The Richards Group approached K&C with a simple idea: For the 50th anniversary of Motel 6 they wanted to send a family on a classic road trip spanning 50 years.
“When Pete [Everitt, agency creative/art director] and I came up with the idea, we didn’t think it would ever happen,” said Chris Smith, brand creative group head/writer at The Richards Group. “It was just so much more ambitious than anything we’d ever tried for the brand. But that’s exactly what the client wanted for their 50th, so they took a risk. We feel really lucky to have a client like that. It’s funny how such a simple idea can be so complex to execute. The trick from a creative standpoint was for none of the effort to show. It all had to come off with the campaign’s long-established simplicity and approachability, with a subtle sense of humor that was surprising but not broad or slapstick.”
Director Rick Gledhill, a partner in K&C, noted, “To quickly transition through five decades in just 30 seconds required a deft blend of VFX, slick edits, and camera trickery. From CG to CG car changes to hidden wipes and quick camera moves, we called upon a variety of old and new school techniques. The goal being that the focus of the audience’s enjoyment is on the fact that the world is changing, not the actual changes themselves.
Gledhill added, “Crafting the precise period feel was not only reliant on what we see within the world, but the lens through which we see it. So we designed a slightly different film look for each decade. Color, grain, and lighting subtly change to help the audience quickly access which time period they are in.”
The spot begins with a shot of a 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air Nomad cruising down a desert highway with suitcases on top and a family of four inside. The well-known Motel 6 music arrives with Tom Bodett’s one-of-a-kind voice: “Over the past 50 years, the way America travels has changed,” he says, as the station wagon transforms into a ’64 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser. Inside the car, visual changes to costume, hair, makeup and even the warmth of the imaging depict the 1970s, as Bodett speaks. “But through all that time and all those many changes, there’s been the same place to find a comfortable night’s rest.” While Bodett relates his thoughtful message, K&C’s storytelling fuses spot-on directing, casting, art direction, editing, animation and visual effects artistry to bring family, gadgets and vehicles up-to-date, as the destination is reached. “Motel 6,” Bodett ends: “Fifty years, and the light’s still on.”
Led by Gledhill, the crew shot out in the desert using the RED EPIC on a process trailer, camera car and a Technocrane to achieve all the external car shots. Day two was for green screen interior shots and the Motel 6 resolve shot.
“The interior shots of mom and dad transforming from the 60s to 70s involved shooting everything separately so we could time everyone’s performance down to a split second,” Gledhill explained. “The camera was locked off as we shot the son and daughter individually in both wardrobes, then we shot mom in both wardrobes, then dad and finally the moving background plates were shot as well as an interior exposure. In total, 11 plates were captured just for those two shots, and that’s before they were tracked and recreated in 3D so we could transition the inside of the cars, add hair growing on dad’s face and extend his collars.”
Although all the cars were photographed, 3D versions were also painstakingly recreated in Maya, inside and out, to give the filmmakers complete control over transitioning them through the decades.
“When it came to compositing the CG cars, we wanted things like the lighting, texturing, and colors to perfectly match the original cinematography,” said K&C’s art director Jon Lorenz. “We made the decision to render the 3D from Maya V-ray, and generated some stunning results for our compositors to work with in After Effects. Having our Maya artists render out UV Passes allowed the compositors to take a 2D texture image and re-map onto whatever was rendered from 3D, adding back in all the detail to the aging body work.”
The father’s facial hair was another of many postproduction challenges. Since the actor’s head is turning while his mustache and sideburns grow out, K&C’s artists had to track his movement using a combination of PF Track and a few hand keys in Maya. Styling the digital facial hair involved inventive use of Maya fur. “The hair was lit with a basic setup of five lights and rendered with Mental Ray,” said K&C’s Andrew Cook. “To finish off the effect, the hair was color and light matched to the actor’s real hair and blended into the final shot with a combination of Nuke and After Effects.”
“Every so often a job like this comes through our doors, and there is a definite air of excitement in the studio,” added Gledhill. “This project is a truly original concept, great creative, and such an iconic brand. We all remember a certain decade for different things, and as we transform from the 1960s through to present day, we layered this commercial with so many details and nuances to trigger those memories. Our hope is that each time viewers see the spot, they’ll see something new.”
K&C exec producer Jerry Torgerson, noted, “A spot like this was a perfect fit for our studio, with production, direction, editorial and VFX all under one roof.”
Review: Director Tyler Spindel’s “Kinda Pregnant”
We have by now become accustomed to the lengths some movie characters will go to keep a good comedy lie going. But it's still a special kind of feat when Amy Schumer, playing a baby-mad single woman who fakes a baby bump in "Kinda Pregnant," is so desperate to maintain the fiction that she shoves a roast turkey up her dress.
You might be thinking: This is too ridiculous. The stuffing, alone. But if we bought "Some Like it Hot" and "Mrs. Doubtfire," I see no reason to quibble with the set-up of "Kinda Pregnant," a funny and often perceptive satire on motherhood, both real and pretend.
"Kinda Pregnant," which debuted Wednesday on Netflix, is a kinda throwback comedy. Like "40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Wedding Crashers," you can basically get the movie just from its title.
But like any good high-concept comedy, "Kinda Pregnant" is predominantly a far-fetched way for its star and co-writer, Schumer, to riff frankly on her chosen topic. Here, that's the wide gamut of pregnancy experience — the body changes, the gender reveal parties, the personal jealousies — all while mixing in a healthy amount of pseudo-pregnant pratfalls.
It's been a decade since Schumer was essentially launched as a movie star in the 2015 Judd Apatow-directed "Trainwreck." But "Kinda Pregnant," which Schumer wrote with Julie Paiva, almost as adeptly channels Schumer's comic voice — the one that made the sketch series "Inside Amy Schumer" so great.
The movie's opening flashes back to Lainey (Schumer) as a child playing with dolls and imagining herself a mother-to-be. So committed is she to the role that Lainey, in mock-labor, screams at her friend and then politely apologies: "Sorry, but the expectant mother often lashes out at her support system."
But as... Read More