Audi Puts Viewers in the Director's Chair
Renewed creative digital force, Holler, collaborated with director Yanni Kronenberg on a genre-bending world-first campaign for Audi.
Here’s how they did it:
When marketing group IPMG merged digital agency Mass Media with sister agency Holler earlier this year, the emergent full service creative digital company had great ambitions. Ironically the latter had won the Audi account from the former and then together, with renewed creative and digital capabilities, set about the enormous task of creating a groundbreaking campaign for Audi Quattro technology in Australia.
Director and photographer Yanni Kronenberg was asked to direct Audi’s 30 and 60 second TV spots for its ‘Australia Land of Quattro’ branding. The world-first ‘direct your own TVC’ campaign would allow users to create their own television commercial from the suite of cinema quality footage collated.
Millions of possible versions could be created from the footage and the resulting thousands of ads were entered into a competition for the chance to have the TVC screened on national television and to win a business class trip to Germany.
Audi invented the all-wheel-drive space with their rally winning Quattro technology and the company was keen for the ‘Land of Quattro’ concept to establish a strong connection between the Australian landscape and the Audi Quattro technology. The website features scores of top quality ads created by aficionados, amateurs and Audi ambassadors – including television anchor Sandra Sully, actor Richard Roxborough and actress Naomi Watts.
The Vision
To create a website that placed the user in virtual control of a high-end car commercial shoot was a huge undertaking. The director says the most interesting challenge was to conceive ways to shoot a car from enough positions that there could be a multitude of distinctly different commercials generated from the source footage.
The user begins with a classic three-quarter shot of a car driving down a stretch of Australian road, from the aerial vantage point of a remote control quad copter. Superimposed over the image are small moving circles - tracking points - that represent other real time camera angles which the user can click on and shift the point-of-view to the chosen camera angle. The tracking points shift on screen, to represent camera angles from the newly selected perspective.
A five day shoot around NSW captured the footage necessary to serve three purposes – to form the basis of the 30 and 60 second TV spots, to generate enough content to be able to produce an unlimited number of unique TVCs and lastly to integrate seamlessly into the HTML5 microsite interface designed by Holler.
The shoot focussed on a white Audi Q5 with the inverse of the ‘Hitchcock approach’ to filmmaking says the director.
“That’s where you only shoot exactly what is required for the edit and nothing more,” he says.
“For this we had to shoot as many options as possible. Each user-generated ad would become a unique piece of content that would be sharable and would drive the social part of the campaign.”
Location, Location
Using natural light and scheduling shoot days around the sun the team had to deliver footage that could be edited down into thousands of different commercials.
“The volume of shots we needed to get in the can in the daylight hours we had available was a challenge,” he says. “Our DOP Bob Humphreys was instrumental in ensuring we got through everything while maintaining the highest quality of cinematography. Suzanne Mallos of Aloha Films was at the production helm and her planning and creative input was meticulous.”
Kronenberg planned the shoot and visual style of the content directly in parallel with the creative development of the website. He worked closely with Holler creative director James Theophane and his software development and creative teams to conceptualise how the footage would work within the site.
“We scrutinised a lot of car ads that we liked and looked at ways to cover the shoot that would complement the interface design. They were generous in allowing me to be involved at early stages with how the site was conceived and how the content was presented.”
“We wanted the users to feel like they were in control of their own production and shoot within the website – a bit like a multi-cam OB (Outside Broadcast) style shoot where you have multiple cameras feeding into a vision switching desk, with a director cutting live between them.”
While hoping to create an experience as interesting as possible the team also sought to separate the skilful users and people who put more time into the website from the less sophisticated entries.
“We also included shots that weren’t technically perfect,” he explains. “To make a good edit, you need to spend time on the site and work with the material to edit together the choice elements that make a good ad.”
The choice of locations was instrumental to the production itself and the end product. It reflected the varied terrain that a driver might experience venturing around Australia - one dirt road, one tar road and one costal location with rocky terrain. The locations needed to feel uniquely Australian but not overly specific or familiar.
“The look we were going for in the cinematography and grade was natural and film-like, with cooler tones in the blacks, that were lifted a little to give a slightly low contrast feel,” the director explains. “We also needed to find locations that were suitable for flying remote control helicopters. This meant no high wind areas and no electricity wires, or large obstructions close to the road, like trees or poles.”
Techno
One of the most challenging on set aspects of the project was creating continuous extended takes of aerial footage (up to 20 seconds) from multiple angles. The shoot needed to be directed in such a way that the footage would integrate into the interactivity of the website. The team wanted to create the illusion that when you were on the website you were in control of a car commercial shoot.
The shots were required to be perfectly stable. This meant either achieving stability in-camera, or in post. Unlike full sized helicopters, remote control helicopters are subject to distance, line-of-sight restrictions and gusts of wind. Often aerial passes were repeated many times over in order to achieve the perfect shot.
For the shots to match each other when the user clicks between each angle in a given scene, each shot required re-timing in post production so that the car was in exactly the same position at the same timecode for every angle. In this way users could click between angles and it would appear that the camera position was changing as the car was continuing to drive, as opposed to separate takes. Autodesk Flame and Adobe After Effects were used to achieve this.
A variety of camera hardware hired from Panavision Sydney and The Front was used on the bold venture including Red Epic, Canon 1DC, Canon 5D Mark II, Sony NEX 7, GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition together with an Angenieux and Zeiss Ultra Primes zooms.
The team used the services of The Heliguy to carry out the remote control helicopter camera support, mounting one remote control helicopter with a Red Epic and another smaller helicopter with a Sony NEX 7.
“The way I planned the shoot coverage was defined by the way in which the web interface was conceived – which was ultimately the most important destination for the footage as it was where most people would engage with the project,” Kronenberg says. “The development team at Holler achieved something really amazing with the Land of Quattro website. The website is effectively a real-time video editing system built into an HTML5 interface. When the user is finished editing in low res, the back end completes the high res online edit and automatically uploads the finished HD video to Vimeo. It then emails the user a unique URL to a Land of Quattro page with their video embedded.
The Engagement Gift
Kronenberg says that directing the TV campaign, while also having a hand in the digital campaign was exciting.
“I love the opportunity to work on projects like this that push the boundaries of technology and to try things that haven’t been done before even if they might fail,” he says. “I also really like to work on projects that have multiple layers of distribution, in this case a TV campaign and an interactive digital component. It was really exciting to see people’s ads start popping up on the website, and to see the time that people had taken to craft their videos. I was impressed at the engagement of the public, particularly in terms of dwell times on the site.”
For Kronenberg the integration of motion content with the interactive web experience was the most interesting element of the project.
“It’s not often that you get to work on a project that has such an ambitious way of incorporating an above the line TV and print campaign within the digital space. Australia’s take on the global Land of Quattro has become an integral part of Audi’s brand ecosystem in this market.”
While the phase 1 TVC competition is over, the website will remain up for a year and intrepid Audi enthusiasts can continue to play with the interface and share their ads.
The competition winner was announced last month, won by Melbourne-based Gem Downing. His ad broadcast nationally last week.
When co-CEO Caitlin Millar-Jack said in a statement earlier this year, “Too many agencies forget about the craft of production when talking about creative. We believe execution is as important as creative. This merger sees us bolster our production capabilities, while also building our data and technology credentials,” she was yet to see Australia the Land of Quattro deliver this in spades.
Co-CEO Mike Hill described at the same time of Holler's ability to make the right moves at critical moments in relation to the senior appointments of Merran Morton as the new head of client services and James Theophane as creative director.
The same can be said for a brave creative choice by both client and agency and the great acuity employed in selecting Kronenberg and the production team. Not only a world first, but a campaign gift that keeps on giving. The ask being made of consumers was significant and they loved it. With Audi Quattro now indelibly linked to Australian terrain, one looks forward to the next Audi/Holler/Kronenberg alliance and the creative digital potential it could explore.
Land of Quattro Campaign credits:
Agency: Holler
Creative Director: James Theophane
Agency Producer: Thomas Trenfield
Account Services: Laura Boyd
Director: Yanni Kronenberg
Producer: Suzanne Mallos
DOP: Bob Humphreys
Production: Aloha Films
Post Production: The Editors
Editor: Dave Whittaker
Sound Design: Klang - Brendan Woithe
Music: Michael Dow
