Many of you that are attentive to sports have seen several of my last outings, from GMC “light bulb” to Verizon “share everything” spots, but for sure you have seen the Toyota work I have been doing for Saatchi & Saatchi through Furlined, Hello!, GOFilm, and AvantGarde Media.
These spots feature Jan (Mariella for the Latin Market). A character that welcomes all comers to Toyota’s quintessential dealership, designed by yours truly to be assembled, dressed, shot, then, undressed, disassembled and stored until repeated next time.
We had a good starting point for our design, as we had shot a few outings on location, but with the loss of that location, and the limitations it presented, we took the opportunity to design from scratch a Utopian Toyota Dealership that could represent textures, tones, colors, customer comforts and vehicle configurations to meet the brand perfectly.
In this endeavor, we also addressed the way we could control the lighting on the cars, present signage for each event, and define a customer flow for blocking. The best exercise for controlling and designing the production to perform perfectly for the Toyota Brand.
This also opened the door to utilizing the furniture and fixtures that can be found at any of the currently updated Toyota Dealerships, from Jan’s desk all the way around to the Product displays and Sales Areas as these objects were very cumbersome, and had no place to live on location, so, I designed the set to accept these elements too.
One challenge of building a 12,000 square foot set that has to go up and down is building into the process an economical system to expedite the assembly and disassembly of the set each time while also making transportation affordable and legal.
When sets are built on stage once and for all, these are not necessarily considerations that come into play, but here, these were critical and meant I must design the lesser and background pieces to be identical in repetition, and, to fit together with “keyed” indexing. Also, materials and finishes had to be durable, specifically the floor which had to be shiny and clean and accent the vehicles in reflection, as well as allowing light to play without creating odd patterns on the vehicles.
Another trick I used was to eliminate the cost and risk of using the ground to support the set, instead, designing a steel structure that allowed the entire upper set, ceilings and walls to be hung from the grid of a stage. This opened the door to assembly on the floor of the stage, quickly with good seams and secure rigging, then raised to allow the ground floor set walls and columns to rest easy in place.
My process often begins with some sketches that address the director’s blocking needs, and how the cinematographer wants to move the camera, or light our subjects and vehicles, then, I develop into a CAD model…
…and do some loose previs screen grabs for review with our full team…
The winners here often get run by the agency, and we choose to do final illustrations for client to sign off, using the previs grabs for backup if it helps.
CAD previs allows the set configuration to be determined before lifting a single hammer, and gives us the best opportunity to discuss the way scale and shape will determine our options or limitations for blocking and camera work. A secondary benefit is that this digital model is often handed off to Post Production to be textured and lit and used in creating digital mattes and masks.
The final product speaks for itself: a set that is easy to work, block, light, and present the product in flexible configurations to serve our client’s needs. All while being efficient to install and uninstall repeatedly.
