Coolest commercial ever...

[Adam Y.]

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/581/
There is a secret to this commercial and I am going to see if I can trip you guys up to it. Its pretty impressive showing the innards and stuff that goes inside a car but that is not the secret.

[gburlison]

Is it the tires rolling up the ramp, or the windshield wipers walking?

[MattK]

It looks like it is all done in 3ds... besides that I cant spot anything (well there is one thing... this could never really happen)

[Matt_Kaplan1902]

I couldnt spot anything buyt that movie is really cool

[Mike8519]

Well it can happen. If you have ever been the Franklin Institute Physics section they have a half hour long movie of a huge chain reaction some europeon guy did in a warehouse. It's crazy, tires up ramps, smoke, fire, water, everything was used

But I can't spot what you are talking about...

[MBiddy]

It looks like those wheels have been weighted in the front and being hit shifts the weight out of balance.

I think the coolest comercial is the Gatorade Fierce one where the guy plays basketball against the Velociraptor. Raptor Vs. Raptor. That was genius.

[J Flex 188]

well.. the most impossible thing..and i mean literally imposssible.. is for the ramp to go through the window on the side door.. when the hollow cylinder hits the door, it opens, and the cylinder goes on through.. ramp cant go through window door


still one of the coolest commercials ive seen

[fast frank]

they were talking about it on another forum i go to. they said it took them six hundred and six takes to get it right!

[rbayer]

Here's the deal:

EVERYTHING mechanical in the commercial (that includes tires up ramps, windshield wipers, and the ramp thing) is real. Unfortunately, the room they did it in wasn't quite big enough to house the whole thing so they had to split it into two parts and play them consecutively. The real question is, can you identify the cut? I know where it is, and still can't see it--see if you can spot it!

[IMDWalrus]

Amazing. It's almost like one of Rube Goldberg's inventions. Definitely one of the best car commercials I've seen in years.

[sevisehda]

Now that I've watched it about a dozen times, and shown it to everyone who walks by I have no clue where it was spliced. It seems really long for a commercial though. I wonder if anyone will use the wiper idea next year for a walker?...

[Jim]

The ramp through the window has me stumped too. It must be in two pieces, cantilevered on both sides to look like it is one board supported by two legs, and cut at the window.

Either way, that is too cool. I have wasted a lot of people's time at work today with that one.
:D

[Dave Flowerday]

This (http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/13/ixhome.html) article seems to indicate that it was not spliced, saying that it was done in "one clean take". Rob, where did you hear that it was spliced? It's an impressive editing job if it really is.

[dlavery]

If you look at the ramp through the window portion very, very closely you can see that the wooden ramp is actually two parts that butt up against the window. There is a very small seam in the ramp through which the window passes (I had to step through it frame by frame to spot it). The left side of the ramp is supported by the hydraulic jack, the right side is supported by the metal stand that also holds up the battery to power the window washers.

There are two things that look questionable to me: the fluid pouring out of the coolant reservoir that tips the flat plate with gears that fall into the engine block, and the rolling muffler. For the fluid, notice that when the reservoir tips a large gush of fluid pours out, indicating that the reservoir is nearly full. Yet when it is resting on its side, with the opening at the bottom, nothing else pours out after the initial splash. For the rolling muffler, it seems that the amount of rolling friction incurred by the muffler would prevent it from rolling as far as it does without some additional energy being added to the system. The initial roll down the inclined plane does not appear to be sufficient to add the energy needed.

Still, it is an unbelievably cool commercial!

-dave

[Adam Y.]

It looks like it is all done in 3ds... besides that I cant spot anything (well there is one thing... this could never really happen)
Well the secret was that someone out of there minds actually did this. Imagine how annoyed(an understatement) at the people who made the commercial. They took apart one of the six prototypes to use it in a commercial. You know what else is pretty impressive the Asimo commercials. Well it can happen. If you have ever been the Franklin Institute Physics section they have a half hour long movie of a huge chain reaction some europeon guy did in a warehouse. It's crazy, tires up ramps, smoke, fire, water, everything was used
The name of the movie is the way things go. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005UW7W/qid=1050689681/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/104-4135839-0009526?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

[Adam Krajewski]

According to this article (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12844132&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=TAKE%20606) there is one second of CG to join two sections.

The 606 takes doesn't make sense to me. It was filmed over 4 days, that would mean one take every 9.5 minutes. Doesn't that seem way too fast for such a complex set-up?

Also, it would have been much cooler if the car at the end ran into a cog on a board. ;)

For film geeks, the movie Russian Ark is one continuous 96-minute shot. The trailer is here (http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/russian_ark.html).

Adam

[rbayer]

Originally posted by Dave Flowerday
This (http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/04/13/ixhome.html) article seems to indicate that it was not spliced, saying that it was done in "one clean take". Rob, where did you hear that it was spliced? It's an impressive editing job if it really is.


Slashdot ran a story on it a few days ago and I remember reading something about it there. In theory, the splice is during the scene where the exhaust pipe is rolling accross the floor and from what I remember, they used a computer to "touch up" the splice, which is probably why I still can't see it even when I replay that same scene over and over again.

Slashdot story: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/14/1146230&mode=nested&tid=129&tid=186

Pagee that mentions the splice: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/page.cfm?objectid=12844132&method=full&siteid=89488&headline=TAKE%20606

[AJ Quick]

I have watched that commercial several times.. and wow, that has to be one of the best commercials ever made. Is this just a UK commercial though? I would love to see the whole thing on TV.

[Yan Wang]

I went through it frame by frame and what I realized after was that the foreground didn't tell me anything. Watching the background and using some logic, I realized Honda didn't have a long enough room for this :) So I searched around 1 min into the movie and conclude that the most logical place is the nut falling and making the muffler roll. It's by far the easiest place to do anything with as everything's still except for the nut or w/e that thing rolling is. Anyway, almost an hour wasted, back to spring break.

[OneAngryDaisy]

Saw this thread as an opportunity to show everyone a commercial that still amazes me.. Check this out-

http://www.legendsmagazine.net/pan/download/classics/fantsnz.zip

[Daniel Brim]

good comercial :-) The wheels up the ramp do look a little weighted

*Sigh* It is pretty nice when things work (unlike our robot)

[miketwalker]

Originally posted by DanielBCR
good comercial :-) The wheels up the ramp do look a little weighted

*Sigh* It is pretty nice when things work (unlike our robot)

Difference is you didn't have 600+ rounds to fix everything up and make it better in ;)

[Clark Gilbert]

Very cool commercial, but did anyone realize that their Honda Accord is really just a new Mazda 6 (wagon style) with a Honda Accord dashboard?

Maybe that's just the car fan in me.:)

[DanL]

The driver sits on the right side in that commercial... I thought that only happens with British cars....;)

[Jnadke]

I thought it was awesome!


I would never have known it was shot in 2 sections if I wasn't looking for it. Once somebody mentioned that it was 2 shots I noticed it right away.

You can tell when the muffler approaches the other part, the rate of rolling starts slowing down to barely anything, but then increases for a split-second (enough to complete 2 rotations), and then slows down to hit the part.

On the second shot they probabaly pushed it by finger, which would account for the higher rate of rotation during that splice period. You can tell they spliced it right when the muffler whas on it's end, because it makes a rotation very rapidly when it shouldn't have. It would have been physically impossible.

[Gadget470]

Originally posted by J Flex 188
well.. the most impossible thing..and i mean literally imposssible.. is for the ramp to go through the window on the side door.. when the hollow cylinder hits the door, it opens, and the cylinder goes on through.. ramp cant go through window door

If you look closely, there is a split in the wood where the window is. It's thin, but it's there. Check the flash version so you can easily zoom on the section: http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html

The start side is supported by a spring-like thing, forgot what it was, the end side is supported by the rest of that frame (which leads over to the winshield washer).

As to the muffler cut? I think it's one peice of film there, the last rotation seems to be done because the muffler output is on the towards side, thus CG is shifted towards where it's wanting to roll at that point.

[Libel]

obviously the ramp thing when the window is opened is operated by sensor below the ramp...

if u look closely u see wires attached to the bottom of the ramp which is what activates the window... (using electro-magnetism i guess?)

[tatsak42]

Off center weighted non-circular objects tend to slow down and speed up during their rotation. I don't think the cut is there.

"I thought that only happens with British cars...."
Not ONLY, but in that commercial, it should, it's a .uk website, and a commercial that was shown in britain, not in the us... as far as i've ever seen.

[BlueOrion]

It seems that some of the best commercials come out of the U.K., especially Britain, so it must be the frequent rain that keeps all of the people inside with little more to do than think and make these things. In my life I have seen many Rube Goldberg's, some simple and childish, some extremely far-fetched, but none this involved and thought out. It's funny, inventive, and at the same time it sells the product. In one word: PERFECT.

[Rickertsen2]

Its great. Very unlike most car commercials, which are almost always the same old boring "different angled of a car driving down a road." Although very long.

[SaxMan701]

Hmm, I thought it was shot in one shot with 600+ takes.

The reason why we don't see it on TV is because it's too expensive for w two-minute commercial in America. It was, of course, shown in the UK.

Yes, the wheels are weighted, and as far as i heard, the only time conputers were used was at the end with the title and such.