A52, Go Film, Rad-ish and TBWA/Chiat/Day Reveal "Side Effects" -- Newest Spot in Nissan's Cure for the Common Car Campaign

"Side Effects" is the newest commercial in the 2002 Nissan Altima television campaign. This release details the creative process handled by the agency TBWA/Chiat/Day, the production company Go Film and the visual-effects company A52. Among the feats was making a first-ever "bungee-cam" shot work to open the spot.

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA. -- Feb. 25, 2002 -- Visual effects and design powerhouse A52 today announced new details of their visual effects work for Go Film and director Rad-ish (Austrians Christoph Chrudimak and Mortiz Friedel) for TBWA/Chiat/Days new 2002 Nissan Altima cure for the common car" campaign. Nine spots of the campaigns ten involve A52s visual effects wizardry, and the newest of those, Side Effects," debuts today.

The 2002 Nissan Altima campaign is based on the tag-line which states that the Altima is the cure for the common car. Its high-impact broadcast campaign relates the cars medicinal qualities -- and its physical, mental and emotional effects. Each spot reveals some new effect before a signature sound evokes the dot-matrix din of your pharmacists printer and prescription-bottle orange labels (courtesy of Brand New School) deliver the tag above the campaigns closing shot.

For Side Effects," the TBWA/Chiat/Day team challenged Rad-ish to capture the car moving in ways that viewers of car ads have never seen before. The spots opening shot does exactly that, bringing the car into frame as the camera swings toward the ground on a bungee cord -- believed to be an industry first.

As TBWA/Chiat/ Days campaign art director Jason Stinsmuehlen explained, They met our challenge on the bungee shot, but there was an unpredictable problem: The shot was so violent in its movement that we didn't think we could use it."

With the goal of getting the bungee shot to match the cut where the camera finds the car and moves with it down the windy road, A52s visual effects supervisor and Inferno artist Simon Brewster got to work. Our visual effects artist Westley Sarokin did a great job; it was basically his shot," Brewster said.

I locked the car into the center of the frame, then retimed it and stabilized it before exporting the frames to Westley for him to put the car in its correct environment in Photoshop," Brewster continued. Westley then sequenced it all up again in Flame and sent it to Mark Loso for more clean-up and finessing. Then, we lined it up with its final live-action plates in Inferno and did final color-correction."

They salvaged the shot and it really does look spectacular," said Jason Stinsmuehlen.

Brewsters work on the spot didnt stop there. There were a great number of moving shots which had speed rails and rigs around the car that had to be removed," he added. The bungee shot was one miracle, but those other shots were a little miraculous as well."

As the Altima winds along the road, an eye appears in the sky with the road reflected in it. We talked with the directors about visual manifestations of performance, and that was one of their ideas," Jason Stinsmuehlen said. They captured the elements and Simon executed the idea perfectly."

The spots moving 180-degree shot from below the front bumper up and over the car to gaze up at it from behind was also a huge rig-removal project for A52s team, involving painting rigs out of every reflective surface on the car, as well as replacing the background. The spot also features shots of the car turning from a distance. For those," said A52s campaign co-producer Leighton Greer, we had to composite the car onto the correct ground and remove the rigs around it."

More of the agency, production and post teams collaborative efforts will be revealed in the months ahead as additional spots in this campaign hit the airwaves.

In addition to Jason Stinsmuehlen, the creative team for TBWA/Chiat/Day also included creative director Chris Graves, copywriter Neal Hughlett and producer Anh-Thu Le.

A52s project team was led by executive producer Liz Roewe and producers Darcy Leslie Parsons and Leighton Greer, and also included visual effects supervisors and Inferno artists Simon Brewster, Mark Alan Loso and Patrick Murphy, on-set visual effects supervisor Ed Chapman, Infinity artist and online editor Scott Johnson and visual effects artist Westley Sarokin.

Production was overseen by Go Films executive producers Robert Wherry, Jonathan Weinstein and head of production Lisa Tauscher and also included producer Steve Frederickzs, production supervisor Caroline Kousidonis and production manager Sandy Schwartz.

The team from Rock Paper Scissors was led by executive producer and managing director Linda Carlson and included producer Romi Hoffman, editor Adam Pertofsky and assistant editor Lawrence Thrush.

Brand New School provided graphic design of the campaigns on-screen prescription labels, and music and sound design were handled by Stimmung in Santa Monica. Stimmungs credits include executive producer Gulla Petursdottir and sound designer Reinhard Denke.

About A52
Established in 1997 as a home for the very latest high-end computer graphics technologies and the worlds most talented graphic design artists, West Hollywoods visual effects and design powerhouse A52 creates award-winning imagery for the worlds most visually ambitious commercial and music video projects. Recent projects include spots for Levis (recent Shoot Magazine Top Spot of the Week"), Jeep (Gold WorldMedalist at The 2000 New York Festivals Television and Cinema Advertising Awards) and BMW (AICP 2000 Visual Style honoree, along with Jeep Hand"), Toyota (winner of two Clios, plus 2000 International Monitor Award for Best 3-D Animation") and Nike Freestyle" (recent Shoot Magazine Top Spot of the Week"), as well as music videos for The Wallflowers, A Perfect Circle, Macy Gray, 'N Sync and No Doubt. For more information, please call 310.385.0851.