Some may recall that famous Honda ad from about five years ago that showed a Rube Goldberg device made out of Honda car components. What was notable was that they wanted to do it in a single take and had to repeat it 606 times before they got it right on take number 607. For those who missed it, here it is again.
Now via Machines Like Us I saw a new ad that Honda has come up with that is also pretty impressive, though this time it is computer enabled.
What impresses me are the creative people who come up with such ideas, thinking up things that would never occur to me.
“Cog” is the name of the first spot and while it’s “mostly” real, there’s still some CG trickery involved -- never trust anyone who says anything was done without CG these days 🙂
The bit where the muffler box rolls across the floor (around 1:20) is the transition point between the two shots.
Apparently there’s some other post production work, but nothing major (although it wouldn’t surprise me if the car at the end was completely CG and I don’t trust the banner in the slightest).
It’s still a fantastic commercial though.
The first commercial is called “Cog,” and is about 10 years old. Just a few years ago, they also released another UK commercial (whose title I don’t know) using only a choir for the sounds: http://youtu.be/kHAeg2DOcNA
Homda UK does such great commercials. I wish they’d do some like that here.
Where did they manage to find a hallway that long to do it?
They didn’t, that’s why it was done in two 1 minute chunks blended together (at least that was the official excuse 🙂 ).
Building that backdrop on a sound stage would have been pretty trivial and some of those are positively gigantic (the old Spruce Goose hangar is/was a sound stage, for example).
A trip down memory lane in the second ad as I have owned a couple of the Honda C90 motorcycles (the very first ‘bike in the ad). Wonderful machines, three-speed gearbox and centrifugal clutch, and oh so many years ago.
And did anybody else think of the scarab beetle scene from The Mummy (the Brendan Fraser / Rachel Weiss version) when you saw that little vacuum cleaner running around the hand?