I found at least one site that says Toyota claims they are totally undoctored. Maybe I can see the one where they almost drive of a cliff, becasue the driver could have a parachute I guess if he messed up. The one where they dead lift a container hanging over a cliff, same thing, maybe. But the one where the driver not being decapitated by a swinging girder depends solely on his ablility to stop the truck within an inch of the target strikes me as a bit unbelievable. Anyone know for sure?
I’ve been wondering the same thing. It doesn’t seem like it could be legit to me because it looks way too dangerous for anyone to take those chances no matter how good the truck may be.
The one with the cliff gives me the willies.
I haven’t seen one of those in a while, but are you sure there are people in the trucks? It’s fairly simple to rig up a remote-control mechanism.
Even then… you’re tossing out a rather expensive vehicle… you’d think they’d have some sort of stop (maybe an auto release to drop the giant box if it gets too close?).
Its not like these things are bottles of Tide detergent on a commercial set…
C’mon, w/ all the digital recreations that can be done today do you really think they’d go to all the trouble and risk to actually do those things IRL?
Here at work I made a car do acrobatics on top of a ball on a circuss ring…
I see no reason they can’t be completely legitimate. Toyota can afford to crush a dozen trucks (remember, they can buy at below dealer invoice) to get the one perfect shot for the commercial. As has already been pointed out, there doesn’t have to be a live driver in the truck, and they can do a lot of dry runs in non-hazardous conditions to work the bugs out of a gag before cameras roll.
Also, it wouldn’t help them sell trucks if it were known that the commercials were CGI or faked in some other way.
Think of all the cars that were destroyed while making Dukes of Hazard, or any other car themed show or movie.
Real. Scoop from Toyota and fans:
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2007/02/how_they_made_t.html
http://www.tundratalk.net/forums/toyota-tundra-news/198-yes-tundra-ads-real.html
From Toyota: One of the first two ads in the series, which first appeared during the Super Bowl, showed the pickup accelerating to get through a gap in a wall before huge doors blocked the opening. Another showed the truck teetering on a giant seesaw — towing 10,000 pounds up one side and braking to hold it back as the seesaw tips down on the other side. Stunt driver Chuck Picerni Jr. drove the truck in both.
"It had to be real, or we couldn’t say ‘actual demonstration,’ " says Damian Stevens, Saatchi’s director of integrated production. “Without doing it for real, it’s a cheat.”
In a new ad that began airing last week, a Tundra pickup with stunt driver Matt McBride at the wheel pulls a shipping container with “6,400 pounds of dead weight” up over the edge of a cliff…"
for reference, the 'cliff hanger":
Awesome. Here’s the see-saw one.
Caution! YouTube comments may induce stupidity.
I can flat guarantee you that these commercials are are not CGI or otherwise faked. If they faked it, they would have more regulators climbing down their throats than you could shake a stick at.
Here is what happened to another car company a few years back
What they can do, is set up camera angles and use lenses that make things look more dangerous than they really are. The engineers know just how fast the truck will accelerate. They also know how quickly it will stop. With these two pieces of knowledge it is very simple to set up that same demonstration with any car or truck. A professional driver can get the truck stopped on the mark every time with in an inch or so.
::: Checks You tube for ad::: Is this the ad you are talking about?
::: Shrug::: I could film the exact same ad for any car you name, by moving the starting point of the vehicle, the length of the ramp, and the speed of the gate closure. In other words BFD.
I’m sure you’re right, but how much of it has to be real? In the see-saw ad, the narrator says something about towing 10,000 pounds, but doesn’t actually say the actual demonstration used a 10,000 lb load. Similarly in the “cliff-hanger” ad, the narrator mentions 60 mph, but I’m not sure if that necessarily implies the demonstration was done at 60 mph.
Well, for one thing, the auto makers already provide vehicles for crash testing, so one more isn’t the end of the world.
More importantly, when you consider the cost of shooting a commercial and then running it multiple times on national television, i think you’ll find that the cost of a vehicle or two is probably rather small change in the scheme of things.
I’m getting so sick of “Fake!”.
Toyota says they are real and with a real driver. A stunt driver risking his life for six figures in a big budget action movie I can see. To risk getting his head cut off by a girder if he’s off by an inch for truck commercial pay I had a hard time grasping.
The destuction of the truck itself is nothing, that someone would risk their life for a demonstration like that I find odd.
The risk to the driver is very small. They know how fast the truck accelerates, they know how fast the doors close. Anybody that has a calculator and can do junior high school math can then get the truck though 100% of the time. Same thing with the braking. they know the stopping distance within an inch or so. They probably practiced it 3 dozen times.
Furthermore, look at it again, there are several takes and several camera angles during the stopping. When they did the take at full speed through the doors, for all we know the truck stopped 50 feet short of the end of the ramp. All we know for sure is that during one take the truck got to the end of the ramp.