A post-heavy Honda/epcor spot recently began airing across Alberta introducing a cross-promotion between the two companies involving the former’s new hybrid car, which runs on equal parts gasoline and electricity. The spot’s Edmonton-based director, Michael Hamm of Frame 30, says he shot nearly two hours worth of footage throughout Alberta over the course of a week. His star was a brand new Honda Insight, and he says that unlike the other vehicles in the convoy, the car didn’t have to be filled up once.

The client, says Hamm, wanted the car to be green, however, the only one available to him and his crew was red.

‘The problem was this thing had an air date which would not allow them to get this green car that they wanted,’ says Hamm, who found himself faced with the challenge of making the red car green. ‘We said we’d do the best we could, but there were no guarantees.’

After consideration, it was decided the car would have to be made green in post. Honda was very insistent that the vehicle be green in order to convey its environmental attributes and because the color matches that of the plant where the Insight will be made.

Hamm, dop Bob Riddell and the Frame 30 crew traveled throughout Alberta, hitting every stop they could think of in order to show the car in numerous settings.

‘We shot for six days from Edmonton as far south as we could go in the time, then halfway back to the Saskatchewan border, then all the way up by Calgary,’ says Hamm. ‘We must have hit about 20 little towns along the way, trying to shoot in each one to represent the diversity of the province, and through that, by doing as many different terrain looks as possible, the diversity and longevity of the car.

During shooting he ignored the fact that the red car was really supposed to be green.

‘I shot it not worrying about foreground or background or other colors, my point being if we are going to shoot a red car and turn it green, we’ll just shoot it as a regular car spot,’ says Hamm. ‘Again, not worrying about spectral highlights or grass in front of it or other cars, we just

shot it.’

Before the color of the car could be changed, Scott Parker of Picture Engine was given the task of taking Hamm’s two hours worth of footage and editing it down to 30 seconds. The result: an incredibly fast-paced spot with upwards of 50 cuts.

Parker says after wading through the 99% of the footage that wasn’t going to be used, he started dropping the remaining film into a timeline.

‘I think there was some stuff that was shot for the ad that maybe

didn’t strike me as good as some of the other stuff they shot,’ says Parker. ‘I think they shot a lot of nice footage on that shoot, so it was really a matter of taking all the nice stuff and then up-cutting it to make it more aggressive and more interesting. And I fiddled around with a bit of speed stuff – speeding some shots up and that sort of thing.’

Parker says the commercial took him three days (including ‘thinking time’) to complete.

It was up to Calgary’s Studio Post senior animator Frank Coulas to turn the little red Insight into a green car.

‘My first response when they asked me to do this was, ‘Why don’t you paint the car?’ ‘ says Coulas. ‘They wanted us to change the color of the car [and] we were happy to agree that would be a good way for them to go.’

Coulas says the job was a difficult and time-consuming one, but he happily reports it turned out well.

‘We had to put it into our paint system and rotoscope frame by frame each of the scenes individually,’ says Coulas. ‘The car was in every shot for the full 30 seconds, so we had about 60 scenes to do because of the way they edited it.’

Coulas says it was a challenge removing some of Alberta’s natural props like grass and hay obstructing the the view of the car.

One scene in particular proved tricky.

‘In the end scene the car is driving away down a dirt road so you have all the dust off the back of the car. That scene also made it pretty difficult because we had to composite the dust back on,’ he says.

Now the red car is green and Alberta television viewers are none the wiser, with the exception of Coulas, Parker, Hamm and a few others. Hamm says he expects as Honda begins to unveil the car in other Canadian regions, the spot will follow and play nationally. But what if Honda decides it wants to air the spot with a red car?

‘I’ve got that one too – the director’s cut,’ Hamm laughs. *

-www.frame30.com

-www.studiopost.com