VTR complete ‘Wacky Races’ commercial for Vauxhall Corsa

Commercials and digital film post production house VTR has completed intensive visual effects work on ‘Wacky Races’, DLKW’s new commercial for the Vauxhall Corsa.
Directed by Jason Smith of Brave Films, the 40-second ad features five Corsas in a madcap race around the countryside. The cars take part in a range of crazy stunts and capers involving falling boulders, sneaky short cuts through advertising billboards and precipitous drops. Accompanied by the distinctive snicker of Muttley the dog, the end title reads: “Put the fun back into driving. Corsa.”
The chief tasks for VTR involved not just the creation of complex, set-piece visual effects, but also the meticulous application of a cartoon-style to the live-action throughout the ad. Every scene was treated in inferno, one of VTR’s main digital visual effects systems, with the entire project taking around 500 hours to complete.
VTR’s inferno team on the ad, Dan Williams, Glyn Tebbut and Wes, worked closely with the director and the agency creative team from the pre-production stages. Williams attended the three-week recce and live-action shoot around Queenstown, New Zealand, acting as VFX supervisor and also photographing reference shots for the subsequent post production.
Back in London, the selected takes were colour graded on Spirit at VTR by Tom Russell, followed by an offline edit by Nicholas Wayman Harris at NWH. Then began seven weeks of intensive inferno post, with the team working together to build, hone and finesse the visual effects and cartoon styling.
The precise execution of the boulder scene, where the black Corsa creates a rock fall to delay the other cars, was particularly elaborate, and provides insight into the attention to detail required throughout the project.
Every rock in the sequence, including those shot on set and others shot against bluescreen, was individually animated in inferno, with dust and debris added over the top. The result was then composited with the original live-action footage of the cars, which had been meticulously retimed to provide both the comical feel and to ensure the black Corsa drove through the hole in the rock fall at the right moment.
Finishing touches included the addition of shadows, reflections and dust clouds to each car, along with subtle camera shake to imply the force of the rock fall.
The creation of digital backplates with tangible depth and scale was key to the success of the precipitous drop in the canyon scene. These were created in inferno by the careful painting and combining of aerial stills with other reference footage. Once perfected, bluescreen footage of the car was composited over the background plates with smoke and dust effects adding to the drama.
Rig, wire and crane removal, plus the stripping-in of new sky plates were among the other finishing touches to the ad, which airs on TV across the UK from January 16.
(GB)