A Simplified Production Process
Filming car commercials presents special challenges with lighting and reflections – especially when filming in a studio or against a green screen where the surroundings reflected on the vehicle are usually not the desired end result.
Think of a car like a big mirror. For better or worse, all that chrome, glass and shiny paint are excellent sources for reflection. With proper lighting and a well thought out shot, a savvy director can use this to his or her advantage. For instance, reflected lighting can be used to highlight and at times, even enhance the lines of a vehicle, create a mood or direct the viewer’s eye to a particular feature, while reflected backgrounds can be used to establish location and provide a sense of movement.
In the past, much of this was achieved with green screen. Unfortunately, this technique tends to add many hours in post to the entire process. The VFX department first needs to remove the green spill and then must carefully replace the screen reflections with whatever footage or stills that best sell the effect the director and DP originally intended, while making sure it all blends in seamlessly with the final background.
In contrast, shooting against an LED wall can be a good choice because, unlike green screen, the wall can act as both the final background and a viable light source.
Whether you choose to use stock driving plates or film your own, it’s important to make sure you have a full 360 degree range of angles covered. With the LED wall, that means not only having the plates you’ll see in camera but what also might show up in the reflections. This is especially true if your LED volume contains a ceiling that will allow you to capture sky reflections.
FPO: Insert Still of multiple plates on the wall at once
This Honda CR-V promo was filmed against our LED wall at Infinite Reality Studios. It presented a unique challenge because the client wanted to show the vehicle in two environments at once. We could have filmed both environments separately and composited them in post, but that would have added extra time and cost to the project. Instead, we were able to film both environments at the same time and used the spill lighting and reflections from the wall to sell the illusion.
