Toyota Innova still innovating with VFX

The recent visual effect enhanced ad was created purposefully to identify with a much younger audience and yet retain the versatility factor, which has been communicated since the beginning

The latest Toyota Innova ad, It’s Me, is made up of four vignettes. Each vignette shows how the woman in the screen space associates with the Innova.

The ad is loaded with special effects and computer graphics. It has been created on similar lines as the Airtel-Google ad, which used chroma keying to produce the feature film like effect.

Shivanand Mohanty, executive creative director, Dentsu Communications, says, “The Innova brand needed to be presented in a manner to appeal to a much younger audience.” This younger audience was not just an age bracket, but those individuals who buy a car, not just for its utility and mobility, but for what the car stands for as a reflection of them. The ad aims to capture the various contrasting aspects of the car’s personality and its versatility.

Running shot in chroma

Computer generated silhouette

With simulated background

Silhouette moves in

All cars into one

The ad opens

with a woman walking the ramp and then getting into a red Innova. Next, she is driving in a black Innova dressed in corporate attire. Then, it’s the same woman, in a much trendier and funky outfit, getting into a silver Innova. The next shot has the woman doing various acrobatics and somersaults and dodging things. The car, too, is dodging around, showing its various features. Finally, it all comes together to say that all these are different, but still ME.

(Submit your opinion on this ad.)

The ad was shot by Far Commercials at ND Studio, Karjat, under the helm of Antonio Saraceno, an Australian director who has worked earlier with Toyota. Sar Commercials also had shot the Toyota Qualis ad about four-five years ago. The surreal scenes in which the girl walks on the ramp and the silk sheet converts itself into an Innova and the scene with the acrobatics – all of them were shot using the chroma keying method, in which a blue/ green backdrop is maintained while shooting the scene. After this, the silhouette of the scene is cut out and the desired background applied through visual effects.

The development of the background was carried out in post-production by Prime Focus, which also handled the post-production for the Airtel-Google ad, using various software such as 3DMax, Maya, After Effect, Smoke and Bojou. Bojou helped recreate a scene which had been shot on film so that new graphic elements could be placed within the simulated 3D generation.

In the first scene, where the ramp slides in and the model walks on it is totally computer generated. The black pearl finish ramp did not exist when filmed. “After studying how the model walks on the ramp, we created a measurement of how she moved. This movement was then converted into a computer graphic, which is used to measure all the other aspects involved in creating a background,” says Raj Tambaku, VFX supervisor, Prime Focus. Thus, the lighting and the blinking of these lights is all visual effects; the lights do not really exist.

“It’s a lot like magic – making you believe in something that isn’t there,” he says. The post-production cost around Rs 21 lakh.

Toyota hasn’t planned anything else as part of the 'It’s Me campaign. However, other media may be used later. Actor Aamir Khan has been dropped as brand ambassador.

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