In the UK at least there’s an ad for the new Honda Accord that features many components of the car rolling across ramps and slides bumping into each other, sort of like the elaborate traps in old Tom and Jerry films. They say none of its faked, all the components act without computer trickery. True? Its seems unlikely for the bits and pieces to roll as they did without some sort of tricks going on.
I have seen several articles about it, all say that it is exactly as shown with no fakery. It was 600+ takes, cost them $30 million or so (not sure of that number off hand), and was just a riduclously tedious exercise. Nonetheless, one of the coolest ads ever.
It is indeed unlikely, but possible. For example, the wheels rolling up hill. The wheels are carefully weighted so that the least jog will destroy the equilibrium, bringing the weight from the top to the bottom, thus rolling the tire. Before it can stablize, it knocks another tire the same way. They are indeed able to roll uphill for very short distances this way.
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html
Here’s the ad.
All accounts are that the Honda ad was one single shot without any special effects (and with over 600 takes). The only “cheat” was putting some bolts in the wheels so they’d go uphill.
It is amazing.
there are lots of parts that look fake, especially the tires rolling up the ramp
You can see the ad using Honda’s link here. http://www.marketingfix.com/archives/amazing_honda_ad.php
There have been several threads about this ad. This one debunks the idea that the part with the tyres was faked:
I thought the tires would be possible, but IIRC it seemed like that muffler rolled for quite a long time for an oblong object.
It is funny though that the winscreen wipers stop moving as soon as their ‘link’ has been made. I would have thought that the water on the windscreen would cause the wipers to continue to shuffle.
I don’t know exactly what happens but it seems easy to enough to imagine that the thing on the floor it bumps into somehow disconnects it from the power. Something similar happens with the cooling fan, although it’s easy to see that it pulls its own plug out when it starts to travel.
Thanks to the wonder of interactive TV I have the DVD of this advert (hey, it was free).
As I recall there was one small piece of computer fakery used to tie the whole thing together because the room it was filmed in was not long enough to fit the entire contraption. The film was made in two parts and then stitched together in a computer. I believe the cut occurs while the exhaust silencer is rolling along the ground.
cite?
There is a DVD out there that has a mini-documentary of the ad. With the outtakes and all. Looks real to me…especially with all the frustration of trying to get it right…they even had a small fire…
There is a CG splice in the middle… but otherwise it’s for real.
IIRC, they had to shoot the commercial 600 times in order to get each component to work correctly. It was shot on a sound stage in London.
And here is a story link, The name of the ad was “Cog”.
Checking the facts…it took 606 takes, and it was shot in Paris, not London.
Interesting read.
From gonzoron’s link:
So this means that the amazing rolling muffler really is fake. I called it! There is a split-second when the muffler is the only device on the screen (the previous one disappears to the left, and the next one hasn’t yet appeared from the right), so I guess they spliced the empty floor and wall together to match, and then animated the muffler over the splice?
It’s like a real life Rube Goldberg cartoon. Amazing.
The Way Things Go. This movie has no spliced CGI, just incredible setups. (There is one cut in the middle, but it’s because foam is working its way across a surface and probably took 10 minutes to do so).