SixTwentySix, Directing Duo Miles & AJ Open Doors For Turo

In a fantasy-fueled follow-up to its “Find Your Drive” campaign that first launched in Fall 2021, Turo engaged Los Angeles-based creative studio SixTwentySix to catalyze its status as the world’s largest car-sharing marketplace. The new 60-second spot, “Open Doors,” is grounded in real-world possibilities while propelled by magical realism, evoking the feeling of ease and convenience, freedom and adventure.
 
Conceptualized by L.A.-based SixTwentySix and directed by the duo Miles & AJ (Miles Cable and AJ Favicchio), this follow-up spot to car sharing marketplace Turo’s “Find Your Drive” campaign opens flying above a bustling city. We zip by a rooftop Turo sign, and through the window of a brick loft. Inside the open, bright living/working space, we close in on a stylishly dressed woman, Zora, mid-30s, surrounded by music equipment and awards, as she waves goodbye to her partner, Kai. She’s listening to a beat on her headphones--her own music perhaps--and creatively blocked. Suddenly she picks up her phone, scrolls through photos of cars on the Turo app, and clicks on a cherry-red 1992 Corvette convertible. The adventure begins.
 
A door to the Corvette magically opens, Zora catches keys mid-air, and she drives through the city. She rises up through the city into the pink clouds – returning into another vehicle, a Toyota 4Runner, rotating seats with three fun-loving friends on a road trip. Then there’s a detour through the hatch and she’s at a campsite with her partner Kai, the frenetic background music calms, and she’s sitting, serene, writing lyrics in her journal. Passing through a silver Rivian electric truck as the beat kicks up again, she emerges through a bright yellow Ferrari sports car inside a busy production studio on set of her music video. Zora is elegantly dressed--and the fourth wall is broken as she looks into the camera, a clapboard reading “Zora ‘Book It’” snaps, and we slowly pull back to show the Ferrari amid magically blooming flowers. A title graphic, “Open the Doors to Extraordinary,” segues into a final slate, “Turo: Find your drive.”
 
Favicchio, who also served as executive creative director on the project, explained that Turo reached out to SixTwentySix with a general concept for their “Open Doors” campaign. To Favicchio and partner Cable, the client’s desired results guided the process from which the SixTwentySix creative team took it to that next level. “This project’s goal was to really show off the benefits of what Turo has to offer compared to the competition, offering a huge selection of vehicles--from vintage to ultra luxurious--fit for any experience one could want,” said Favicchio. “Showing off this freedom in a grounded yet vibrant way helped us define ‘magical realism’ as our North Star.” 

“Once our concept was locked we knew VFX and Unreal Engine would be necessary to show off our journey in a captivating way,” added Cable. 

Miles & AJ brought a wealth of thematic details to the original concept, and collaborating with the Turo team was “an exciting process that allowed for ideas to flourish.” Aimed at Turo’s core 25-44 demographic, they knew that imagination would also find a partner in technology. In the wake of three weeks of pre-production came three days of shooting, using the ARRI Alexa Mini LF with DP Xiaolong Liu.
 
Cable recalled, “We rolled out all the toys for this one: pursuit crane camera cars, techno cranes, wire rigs, blue-screen stages, remote control camera heads, and Unreal Engine software for virtual world building.” Pulling off the 360° road trip scene was the biggest challenge--building and animating 360° background plates inside of Unreal Engine, and matching its lighting and camera tracking to the real scenes.
 
Luckily, “using the real-time CG pipeline that Unreal Engine offers gave us on-set information to match our cameras with, lighting and more,” explained Cable. “Blending live-action media with Unreal Engine virtual production allowed us to streamline the VFX process in post, having so many of our worlds approved before we even got into postproduction.” Transitions were an important element as well, mirroring how easy it is to travel from one place to another, and to choose any number of Turo vehicles to get you there.

Technology aside, Miles & AJ and the SixTwentySix creative team knew they could not lose sight of a basic truth: The vehicles are the heartbeat of this campaign, while the Turo app is the means by which customers access these incredible experiences. It was imperative to capture these vehicles individually and as part of a larger whole to demonstrate the myriad choices available through Turo.