About 40 locations, all over the Western Cape, were used for the new Hyundai ix35
Reverse commercial, conceptualised by The Jupiter Drawing Room.
In the ad, which is shot from the driver’s perspective, the iX35 starts up in a parkade
and makes its way smoothly through a city. The journey continues on a highway, then
through a suburb, on a bridge, through a tunnel, and over several dirt tracks. At the
end of this mini-road movie, the vehicle reverses into shot with the pay-off line: “The
new iX35, standard with rear view camera. Drive anywhere, any way’.
Produced by Herman Le Roux, the ad was directed by Porteous Xandau for Golden
Planes. Director of photography (DOP) Shaun Lees shot the ad in one week on the RED
Epic camera. A specialised rig was created in order to mount the camera on the car for
its journey from Cape Town to Stellenbosch, Fish Hoek and up the coast.
The Stylus Group, based at the Old Castle Brewery in Woodstock, Cape Town, was
given two days to complete post-production. Amy Daneel cut the commercial on a Final
Cut Pro.
Says The Stylus Group founder Stuart Wilson: “The Hyundai ix35 Reverse ad involved a
fair bit of post-production, but all made to seem as if nothing was done. Every single
shot had something changed, added, cleaned up and finessed, especially the last shot of
the car reversing. The camera team shot one take of the car reversing at great speed,
spinning round and stopping to wait for the dust to clear. We had to clean the car up
and “combine’ the dusty and clean shots together to create an agency’s dream pack
shot.’
Among the effects that had to be created by The Stylus Group were: adding new lights
on the highway; removing cities in the distance; extending the road to vanishing points;
adding birds; enhancing all the skies; adding windmills; inserting city skylines into the
parking lots, as well as road signs and subtle subliminal dirt and dust to enhance the
overall pieces.
Wilson continues: “All the effects were done on Autodesk Smoke 2013, which is our tool
of choice as it integrates the power of Autodesk Flame compositing software and utilises
a timeline workflow and node-based compositing.’
