Television Commercial

Quite often when you see a television commercial, it will flash the word “dramatization” across the bottom of the screen.  That’s a way of saying that something is not real and only being shown to make a point.  In this case, it was very important to Lexus that the footage shown in the commercial be very real, and not a dramatization.  The idea was to show that the Lexus was a smooth-running car, and that even with a driver inside, with it running, the cards surrounding it and even built on top of it would stay standing.  The hardest part about this entire project was that I built much of it before we ever put the driver in the car, to avoid making him live in the seat for a week while I built the card structure around it.  The act of opening and then gently slamming the door to get him in and out when the time came—and not disturbing the cards—proved to be a sensitive undertaking.  In the end, we were able to get a driver in and out several times, start the car, and let the car run for multiple takes all without any collapses.  The collapse you see at the end of the commercial was intentional.  We had rigged the cards to fall on cue, and they mostly didn’t. But, the second rigging proved lethal, and down they went.