VENICE, CA — VFX studio Brewster Parsons (www.brewsterparsons.com) recently worked with advertising agency rp& and Paranoid US director Thierry Poiraud on a new cross promotional spot between Acura and the blockbuster Marvel super hero film, The Avengers. The commercial features a young couple navigating through an urban battle scene, using the Acura RDX’s GPS system to avoid flying cars, explosion, lightning bolts and ultimately, an alien creature.
Andrew Eksner served as VFX supervisor on the Re-Re-Routed project, which highlight’s the entirely new RDX. The car is the official vehicle of “Marvel's The Avengers.”
Paranoid US executive producer Jamie Miller says comprehensive previs helped solve challenges that might come up during production, allowing the downtown LA shoot to move quickly and with flexibility. “We were then able to move into production fully confident that our footage would blend with key plates from the actual film," Miller notes.
HALON Entertainment handled previs for the commercial.
Eksner and colleagues Simon Brewster and Simon Scott worked with plates from The Avengers film, as well as with original shots directed by Poiraud, director of photography Tim Hudson and their crew during their two-day shoot. The plates from the movie were carefully selected by Poiraud to fit his storytelling needs for the commercial.
"A big problem in reviewing the footage provided was finding scenes that had room to put a car in there," notes Eksner, who credits Poiraud with the nice selections. "Our most challenging shot from the movie is the wider overhead shot, where the car is driving into fire; in the original scene, the whole left area was wreckage and debris, which I cleaned up in Flame. We also used some of the movie's plates that were shot on greenscreen, like the element of the vehicle falling from the sky." For those scenes, the VFX artists performed clean-up and composited in their new footage of the RDX along with other blending elements like debris, matching the perspective and lens from the movie's cinematography.
For the original scenes, the team added wreckage and debris, and shot the Acura driving through those obstacles with some pyrotechnics. Finishing touches included adding more photographic fire elements, as well as final color passes to ensure everything matched the movie's vibrancy.