Making of : NISSAN PULSAR

Our first project working with the great Rick Guest was a complex one, promoting the release of the brand new Nissan Pulsar. With a brief containing a multitude of elements and inspirations ranging from a cloud of dust to an electromagnetic iris, we needed to create an event to symbolise the birth of the Pulsar.

As Rick only had a very small time window to shoot the car in Madrid, we did an angle-finding session in CGI with him beforehand. As a result the car angle was client-approved by the time he got to the studio, saving some precious time. He also shot lots of cloud elements in a different photographic studio in London.

Once we had all the elements to work with, our retouchers started to assemble the background for the car, piecing together multiple images to create the explosion.

The Iris component of the background needed to feel dynamic in order to integrate with the explosive elements shot by Rick. To achieve this our CGI team researched and tested different techniques ahead of the shoot to find the most suitable for the job. It made sense to treat this element not as a still life, but as the frame of a video.

The following clips show some of the many particle simulations used to create the Iris as well as additional atmospheric effects for the shot.

Below is how some of the final Iris elements looked before being composited into the shot

Aside from the iris and the light burst, the other CGI element was the reflection of the environment into the car. The camera and car already existed in the digital scene making it relatively straight forward to line up the reflections which were then composited onto the photographic car by the retouchers. See the reflection in the screenshot below:

Hard work but really well done guys!

CREDITS:

Client: Nissan
Agency: TBWA G1
Art Director: Carina Wachsmann
Creative Director: Nick Cooper
Photographer: Rick Guest
CGI Director: Kristian Turner
CGI Artist: Kristian Turner
Post Artist: Pepe Alram, Kate Brown