Above all, a BMW PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) is a BMW. It just happens to seamlessly switch between petrol and electric.
This groundbreaking range of cars needed a groundbreaking campaign. In our film, when a BMW PHEV switches from petrol to electric, it glows with pure white light. When it changes back to petrol, the light disappears. In other words, the car is ‘Sometimes electric. Always BMW.’
Achieving this effect in a way that felt realistic was much harder than it looked, and the shoot included a lot of firsts. A pioneering LED lighting rig was custom built specifically for the campaign, to give a real illumination effect rather than relying on special effects. An anamorphic camera normally used for IMAX movies gave a more cinematic feel. Add in flying drone shots through a working city, and a cameraman on rollerblades who used to skate at the X Games, and you get a sense of the level of craft that went into creating the film.