Making of Lincoln with Uli Heckmann

Building the perfect stage for the super cool L100 concept car was an exciting task for our Sofia based studio Recom Blacksmith, that also specializes in full CGI environments. The goal was to create a believable salt desert with a very specific mountain range which photographer Uli Heckmann was envisioning.

Starting with a foreground detail and a base pattern, small rocks were scattered to create a more realistic salt lake effect.

Eventually, the patch was used to cover 40 square km which was a breeze using Clarisse. The scene was then optimized and reduced from 28 quadrillion polygons to a mere 4.5 quadrillion.

The next step was adding the water by cutting into the geometry. The position and shape of the glassy, shallow puddles remained flexible to be able to react to feedback from the client.

For the mountain range satellite data came in handy to build and match the photographer’s imagined scenery.

The final treatment was applied by our Stuttgart post team who colour graded and polished the series to stunning results.
See more exterior angles and the futuristic interior (sans steering wheel) on our website.

Client: Lincoln
Creative Lead: Uli Heckmann
Coordination: Tim Michel Producer
CGI: Ivo Stanev / Recom Farmhouse
Post Artists: Christian Schemer, Daniel Seiler, Frank Hoppler, Fabian Stehle / Recom Farmhouse
Supervision: Thorsten Jasper Weese / Recom Farmhouse

The making of: LINCOLN

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All images: Clemens Ascher

Before Christmas I met with photographer Clemens Ascher, who was very kindly helping me with a photographic shoot in Austria, his native land. Clemens has shot for Lincoln a very strong photographic series of images. I told him I intended to write something on him in our blog and when I asked what was his experience of shooting this job, he said: “please do not write about the difficulties of shooting in the heat of the California desert, everybody focusses on that… write about the team, it was a great team to work with and it was the team that made these images what they are” Read more