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View Full Version : When a commercial becomes fine art


jewels
April 25th, 2005, 08:16 AM
This is probably one of the most creative, highest engineered, advertisements that you will ever see. No CGI was involved.
Sharing this with you all because it is amazing. If you are on a dialup, let your machine get the file while you do something else (even my broadband connection slowed to a crawl on the first pass. You will need flash to view it).

There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the film. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it. The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something, usually very minor, didn't
work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions. The film cost six million dollars and took three months to
complete including full engineering of the sequence.
In addition, it's two minutes long so every time Honda airs the film on British television, they're shelling out enough dough to keep any one of us in clover for a lifetime. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in Internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free viewings" (Honda isn't paying a dime to have you watch this commercial!). When the ad was pitched to senior executives,
they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation - including the costs.
There are six and only six hand-made Accords in the world. To the horror of Honda engineers, the filmmakers disassembled two of them to make the film. Everything you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and
complete Honda Accord) are parts from those two cars. The voiceover is Garrison Keillor. When the ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how amazing computer graphics have gotten. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real.
Oh. and about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet. It looks a bit weird in the
commercial.

GO TO:
http://www.steelcitysfinest.com/HondaAccordAd.htm

BRG
April 25th, 2005, 09:35 AM
Ah yes. That brilliant Honda Accord ad! :cool:

It really is an amazing advert, I think everybody who saw it was spellbound at first! :D I have seen it more times than I can count, it was shown a number of times during every Formula 1 broadcast last season, obviously with the BAR Honda team doing well they wanted to maximise publicity. Sadly it's not shown anymore as Honda have a new set of adverts, they use the same voice over guy but none are anywhere near as good as that one.

Another really cool car ad is the new Citroen C4 ad. The car suddenly transforms into a robot, dances a funky jig, the transforms back into a car. It probably uses CGI, but it is still really cool.
Site with Citroen Ad (http://www.visit4info.com/details.cfm?adid=18560)
BRG