CG meteorites and vortexes for The AA
Visual effects from Absolute form the punchline to many a joke in the comedic ad campaign as drivers evade the most obscure scenarios
“WE REALISED THE NEED TO INJECT PLAYFUL VISUALS TO MATCH THE SCRIPTED HUMOUR”
Gustavo Ribeiro, VFX supervisor, Absolute
Enormous swirling vortex on your driving test? It’s okay, you’re with The AA. First car hit by an exploding meteorite on your 17th birthday? It’s okay, you’re with The AA. Husband broken down while you’re on a date with your toy boy? Not okay. But at least he’s with The AA.
The motoring company’s 2023 campaign was comedy gold, with punchlines delivered through witty visual effects from the team at London studio Absolute. Comprising one 60-second hero film and three 30-second films, the campaign was devised by agency The Gate and directed by Si&ad through Academy Films.
As the advert develops, the scenarios sidestepped by the cast, all thanks to them being AA members, become more and more outlandish. Up first, is a father who makes an accidental diesel fill-up in his petrol car while his family are eagerly awaiting their staycation in the vehicle. Next, one man’s X-ray is unveiled to show he’s somehow swallowed his car keys. “It’s okay doc, I’m with The AA”, he shrugs.
The succeeding scenarios are a raunchy affair, a getaway from a robbery, a meteoric explosion into a new car, and an ominous vortex appearing at the Swindon junction during a driving test. Each of these faux pas is cleverly outweighed by the unshakable confidence of being with The AA.
BRIDGING THE GAP
Gustavo Ribeiro was Absolute’s VFX supervisor for the project. It’s a role that’s imperative in bridging the gap between the production and post-production processes, especially for Vfx-heavy briefs. On set, as well as capturing key data, VFX supervisors are a valuable source of insight for the production team. They can quickly suggest alternatives for uncontrollable elements, such as the weather and lighting.
Back in the studio, they’ll assist the post-production team in understanding the shot intentions and timing, as well as client preferences to save vital days of guesswork. For this campaign in particular, having a VFX supervisor was hugely beneficial, as Ribeiro admits himself. “Knowing what the directors wanted to fix in post while we were shooting gave us a massive head start.”
With the commercial shot on location, control over set design was limited. On set, Ribeiro took reference photos of textures, walls and objects to facilitate cleanups. “He also collected LIDAR scans and took notes about camera lenses and positions, which allowed us to start working straight away,” says Fernando Benítez, a CG/FX artist.
“The directors were fantastic, as were the entire production crew. They allowed us access to vehicles and locations to survey and take photos of anything we needed to make the shots work at the studio. It made a difference to document everything and have lots of references to answer any questions, even weeks after the filming was finished.”
ARMAGEDDON, TWISTER AND BREAKING BAD
Absolute’s creative team put together a concept board of references to establish Si&ad’s plan and visualise the possibilities within the realms of VFX. The references were varied, including concept art, stock photos of storms and natural phenomena, scenes from movies like Armageddon and Twister, and the car explosion scene from American drama series Breaking Bad.
Ribeiro explains: “At first, we leaned hard into our references and set out to make things hyper-realistic. But a conversation with the directors helped push the project into a new, exciting route. We realised the need to inject playful, exaggerated visuals to match the ad’s scripted humour.”
The team began to cook up some fun, hyperbolic executions, carefully toeing the line between humorous aesthetics that look legitimate, but without freaking out the audience. It was a balancing act navigated through a tight-knit relationship by the directors and post-production team.
A METEORIC EXPLOSION
One scene that required an abundance of VFX trickery was that of a 17-year-old’s brand new car being hit by a meteorite. To do this, the team worked backwards from the impact zone, creating the trajectory for the meteorite’s path. As a result they could give directional options, depending on the time needed for the punchline.
CG/FX artist Domantas Lukošius used Houdini’s Procedural Dependency Graph (PDG) for the explosive crash. “I knew there would be a lot of iterations of the meteorite’s size, speed and impact on the car, and using PDG sped up the process,” he says. “I could provide four iterations with each PDG batch, resulting in fourtimes fewer revisions before we reached the final look and feel.”
The team used Houdini’s Pyro tool for the fire and smoke simulations, using the car model as a collision object with flames engulfing the vehicle. Part of the challenge was to keep it the right side of gruesome, sticking to the deadpan comedy. Aspects like the car’s suspension and metal bending were toned down, while others, such as the speed of the meteorite, the resulting fire and the explosion’s debris were accentuated for the same reason.
“The photogrammetry really helped for this shot,” says Benítez. “Because we were executing this as a reflection in a house window, having exact references of the car’s size and position in relation to the actors, location and camera was such a help. Dom had already worked on some impact tests, so when we placed his animation in context, we knew it was going to work.”
EYE OF THE STORM
Another electrifying shot comes in the form of an enormous swirling vortex at a junction during a driving test. The task was to create an inflated version of the vortex, comping it into the shot with clearly fictional elements. A simulation approach was taken for the entrance and ominous funnel, with electric blue emphasising the spiral movement.
The team generated particles in Houdini, using a smoke solver to achieve the vortex before adding layers of them to illuminate the volumes and add to the electric feel. A procedural approach was put in place for the moving clouds, which drifted in the sky and helped to cement a looming mood of dread. Rendering layers of different rotation speeds gave the vortex multiple gradients of motion, bringing more scale and impact to juxtapose the calmness of the moving car.
Extra details like a snapping telephone pole and travelling dust further bedded the vortex into the real world. Of the rendering process, Lukošius explains: “I researched different options for render engines that might have helped me in terms of efficiency. Previously I’ve used Arnold and Redshift, but I’d also experimented with Karma. For this project, Karma came out on top. It didn’t require any changes to our pipeline and the Pyro Bake Volume node in Houdini helped to significantly increase the speed of the look development process.”
3D OR NOT 3D
While CG was undoubtedly a key player in the project’s execution, it wouldn’t have
“MY FAVOURITE PART IS KNOWING THAT WE PRETTY MUCH NAILED EVERYTHING WE AIMED FOR” Gustavo Ribeiro, VFX supervisor, Absolute
been possible without 2D creative input. The collaboration between both teams was essential, from both a traditional comping and cleanup point of view. Absolute’s 2D crew took pressure off the 3D team, who were working on huge, cinematic scenes, by using Nuke’s Particle system for elements such as debris and sparks in the vortex and meteorite scenes respectively.
“The 2D team were an essential part of the puzzle,” says Benítez. “They brought our elements together with matte layers and plates, and it was a total collaborative effort enhancing assets and rending lighting. With the vortex, the look was researched and developed by both teams, which meant that constant communication was needed.”
Lukošius adds: “I think it helped a lot that Gustavo was very aware of how long certain things could take in CG. A huge benefit with delivering CG plates to 2D was how easy and intuitive it was to split specific AOVS [arbitrary output values] using Karma. One example is that we were unsure how much blue light the client wanted in the vortex, so we rendered it with the widest flame field gradient possible for the most control adding or reducing scattered glow.”
VFX supervisor Ribeiro has the final word on Absolute’s project. “When I think about the work we poured into this gig, my favourite part is knowing we pretty much nailed everything we aimed for,” he says. “And we still had space to roll with all those extra notes that popped up along the way. It’s normal for things to change constantly in visual effects, but there’s something so satisfying about looking at the mood boards, the storyboards and the concept art, and then seeing that we managed to accomplish something pretty darn close to what we set out to do originally.”