It’s Your Journey: The New Volvo V40

In line with their new releases Volvo Cars also introduced a Facelift for their popular V40 series. 

We wanted to show the V40 Facelift in its proper environment. Taking a step back from the greens and barren nature that we so often experience, and return the city with its high buildings and active life style. An energetic car for a young urban generation.

At the time of the shoot there was no physical car available so we had to use a CGI car for the majority of the scenes in the film. To achieve the desired result we went through many technical steps during pre-production, shooting and post-production. 

A reference car with 3D-tracking markers was used on location during the shoot, later to be replaced with our CGI-car. Showing a car drive through the city is so much more than just a moving vehicle - we really needed to catch all the subtle movements that makes a car feel “real”. 

A full scale documentation of the light and environment was also made on each location prior to the shoot. The locations were then rebuild in 3D to ensure that the car received correct reflections, light and shadows. Hi-res light maps were gathered during the shoot to ensure accurate lighting of the digital car.

Along with our CGI car we also had to 3D-scan and animate a digital actor. The challenge here was to create a visually good driver that was subtle in its animation - realistic while not taking focus away from the car. 

In the compositing, the reference car had to be removed from all the scenes, and replaced with the digital car. Also, anything interacting with the reference car had to be removed as well, including reflections of the car in windows, flares, and objects blocking the car. Once the digital car was composited all of these had to be added back into the scene. 

The challenge here was not only to create a fully digital hero car, but to have it seamlessly interact with the rest of the material, and not having anyone noticing it. We wanted to keep the “analogue” look of a normal car shoot, with all its small defects and misstakes, even though the car is 100% CGI.

Produced by Edithouse Film Works in September 2015

Commissioned by Volvo Car Corporation