How BMW i7 Married Art and Technology in One Not-So-Typical AI-Infused Film

In December 2022, Sky Media announced Sky Arts’ biggest sponsorship agreement yet, with none other than luxury vehicles giant BMW. The multimillion-pound deal was an agreement between the two brands, based on the synergy in their respective carrying pillars: innovation, design, performance, and sustainability, all driven by technology. While it debuted early December last year, the sponsorship deal is to last for a full 12 months, encompassing BMW’s innovative vehicles to come. 

After the sponsorship deal was struck, Sky Media said: “Reflected in the creative, BMW will speak to its audiences’ broad passions throughout this sponsorship by bringing to life technology stories from the brand’s latest models.” And since the shared passion for innovation and creativity were what stood at the heart of this newly sprouted friendship, it was only fitting to see how it carries the new BMW i7 and BMW iX, both running on exactly these values. 

Last year, Michelle Roberts, marketing director at BMW UK, said: “We’re incredibly excited to work with Sky Media to build awareness for the cutting edge technology at the heart of the latest BMW models.”

The brand, advertising agency Media.Monks, FAMILIA and LBB all came together to see the unfolding of the creatively technological beast that is the all-electric BMW i7 car on the set of the commercial this year.

“It’s been a labour of love, the last few months,” said Emma Stevens Broyd, FAMILIA assistant producer on the first shooting day as we watched the massive LED screens light up behind the vehicle. “Now we’re at MARS Volume, who have been absolutely amazing. It’s grown into a beast, but a really beautiful one.” MARS Volume, based just outside of London, became the right partner for the shoot because of the sheer capacity of their technologically advanced studios. Brace yourself for some numbers and try to imagine it at scale: 220-degree 25.5 x 5m curved LED wall and a 108m² lighting LED ceiling stretched around the car, providing the perfect backdrop for an advert that would not only showcase the potential of the vehicle, but do it in the most elegant and Sky-Artsy way possible. 

Francis Wallis, director at FAMILIA, knew that this can’t be just another car ad. And while he’ll be the first to admit he’s a fan of windy scenes on the highway and all things fast and furious, his and Media.Monks’ insights were what informed the approach to this campaign. Which would come to be four-fold: based on four themes that the artistic community of Sky Arts is interested in, all powered by AI. Made by Studio Private (more on them later) the AI backdrops that would crown the LED screens were meant to speak directly to portions of the Sky Arts audiences while showcasing four different assets of the BMW i7. First scene, showcasing the car’s panoramic sunroof, happened before a background of Renaissance clouds, stop-framed, and AI-generated. “The clouds could have just been clouds, like you’ve seen a million times before. But I knew that the whole point was to try and elevate this, make it feel like we’re in a painting, and bring it back to the Renaissance. It doesn’t even look real, it feels so abstract, but when you see it you immediately embrace it,” Francis told me as the emerging clouds around us were floating in the air. No better word to describe it than ‘surreal’.

“Everybody’s doing AI at the moment,” he said. “But most people are stopping at static images, right? Donkey riding a horse on a mountain with Mars in the background - that sort of thing. But making a moving image, as we have, is tricky, because that bit of the technology is not quite there yet. So we decided to stop-frame it.” The LED screens and AI-generated stop-motion however, weren't the only flex of FAMILIA’s production muscles. 

The clouds scene featured an extremely technical shot, involving a techno Dolly, which is essentially a huge, super fast robot-looking thing and the first ever automated, fully programmable camera crane. What it had to do in the first shot was come over the bonnet with a rotation, cut across into the wing mirror and into the window, transporting us into the car. This of course had to be done with the required level of smoothness, the car had to do what it had to do on time and the actor needed to perform correctly - a pure exercise in choreography and perfect timing, which really took a mere 30 seconds in real life, but so much preparation and tech involved. 

I’ve also never seen such a big crane move so swiftly. As the team was programming the techno Dolly for the rotating barrel movement, Mikey Levelle, executive producer at FAMILIA told me: “It takes such a long time to get the programming right. But once you do, you can repeat the moves constantly. After 45 minutes of programming, it takes no more than 10-15 minutes to shoot.”

All of these considerations tie into the idea of the luxury vehicle - you can’t have anything cut up in a clumsy way, so smoothness, speed and feeling are the moving parts behind it all. Max Sellers and Andrea Foresi, respectively copywriter and art director and associate creative directors at Media.Monks echoed the sentiment: “We saw from the competitive landscape that, perhaps unsurprisingly, many other brands are also striving to be seen as leaders in technology. But to some extent, the category has become guilty of what we’ve come to call ‘feature one-upmanship’, focusing more on the functional aspects of car technology and less on how amazing technology can make people feel. That gave us our pivot to create a distinctive approach: from focusing on function to evoking feeling.” With Sky Arts behind them, this became a pertinent starting point regarding the ideation process.

This eventually led to the concept of positioning BMW Technology as a ‘working piece of art’. “Innovation that not only serves a purpose, but creates an emotional link between man and machine. We did this by creating worlds inspired by art movements of the past, to which our tech/feature could come to life. Whether that be brutalist architecture or Renaissance-like clouds capturing the spirit of letting a world in with the Panoramic Glass Sunroof. Ultimately, we wanted to show that BMW’s approach to technology, like art - can elicit a strong human response.”

Speaking of brutalist architecture, this was the next aspect of the film. The clouds were quickly replaced by a backdrop of a futuristic hollowed-out building that was going to serve as the introduction to the self-parking feature of the car. “We wanted to speak to that portion of Sky Arts’ viewers that loved architecture,” Francis told me. “And choosing the variation of modern building took a lot of tries until we eventually came down to something we all liked.” Next came music, for which the script was a lot more melodic and switched up the energy from the cool architecture backdrop. “That one is an explosion of lights and colour. The talent walks up to the doors and as they open, the light floods out. Some of that we will create during the day, but parts of it will come afterwards in post,” added Francis. 

He continued, “The last scene is more focused on the interior of the BMW, because we also wanted to highlight the tech elements in there. For that we created a sort of aurora backdrop that gives this constant glow, as we are situated inside the vehicle. It starts off as a green-ish and purple tint and by the end is this more an orange colour palette.” Max and Andrea explained that their close work with Francis allowed the film to create and explore the four different art worlds housing the tech at length. “The aesthetic of each world we created was determined by the feature that’s front-and-centre of the ad. For instance, to express the tech behind the sun roof, we looked back on the Renaissance and in particular the way the artists at the time painted the sky. It’s these art movements that helped us to create moments and backdrops for BMW’s Technology to truly shine.”

To match the art worlds created by the two teams, the right vernacular was necessary to best describe the partnership between the car giant and Sky Arts. The copy didn’t shy away from words such as ‘conduct’ and ‘set’, further bridging the technology and the worlds the teams created. It was the utilisation of AI and MARS’ LED screens that truly allowed for those four worlds to collide together while keeping on schedule - or at least, almost on schedule. “Because I can change the images in the back with the snap of my fingers, I strategise. Instead of spending a whole morning going over the entire scene, we did two shots from the clouds and then, taking advantage of the car being in the same positioning, we did two more shots from something else to save time by just changing the background. It’s kind of like playing Tetris,” explained Francis.

While Francis was positioning his next row of Tetris cubes on the LED screens, me and Bianca Redgrave, head of creative development at Studio Private and the culprit for the incredible AI imagery, had a conversation about the process. Introduced to FAMILIA by a freelance producer that Studio Private also worked with in the past, they quickly got into the important conversations with Mikey and Francis about execution and creative vision. While clear from a conceptual point of view, the concept wasn’t that fleshed out when it came to execution or even end goal. The novelty and infinite possibility coming with AI tech also didn’t make things easier. So, the process started with digging around the initial ideas.

“They were certain they wanted something that was fully AI,” Bianca explained. “But because of how little is known about AI, there are a lot of uncertainties. It’s very rare that a huge brand like BMW will say ‘Yes, of course, get on with it’ without having a concrete result in mind. But we all believed in the project, so we took the leap.” However, most of these work best as stills. “But we see quite a lot of that at the moment,” continued Bianca, echoing Francis’ strive for novelty. “Finding something that would translate well into motion was a challenge. It was not only heavy in terms of understanding how to make it move, but also how to make it work on such a wide LED screen. This is where we really collaborated with MARS, because we wanted to stray away from CGI as much as possible and keep it AI-centric.”

She continued, “Francis was certain that he didn’t want to stretch or mirror, so we found a way to fit the whole screen. In really basic language, we took our output and then used another AI model to make it bigger. Then we did the stitching - we up-res’ed it and we stitched it to fuse together. This is the only post as opposed to AI. And a bit of a grade.” As we were speaking, the technicians tweaked the dials and live graded the image in front of us on screen.

Although the BMW worlds created for the campaign are only four, Bianca explained to me that the prompts used were over a hundred. “It was all trial and error and so many things came up. For example, Donald Duck would appear out of nowhere a few times. But the prompts were a huge part of the project. Then the filtering and editing to find the perfect image, the stitching together to make it work as a stop motion was very much a human effort. So, yeah, it’s AI, but without the team it wouldn’t have gotten anywhere. It’s all down to their expertise.”

Max and Andrea at Media.Monks agreed: “When it came to shaping the campaign, working with the client to tick all the boxes in the most creative way possible was a delight and a truly collaborative job. With only three days to shoot, our producers and FAMILIA really pulled out all the stops to negotiate complex set-ups and moves within the demanding time-frames we had.” And this all shone through on set where anybody could feel the teams working as a well-oiled machine throughout. As Mikey had promised earlier in the day, any challenge that came along, they overcame.

By marrying art and technology, the campaign not only elevated the BMW i7 but expressed the partnership between the brand and Sky Arts with customers in mind. The four different art worlds created for the film housed the technology and carried through the aesthetic of luxury, seamlessness and boundless creativity. Max and Andrea leave us with this: “Like the arts, BMW Technology excites, evokes joy, and creates a connection with people. So the partnership with Sky Arts allows us to reach that audience to evoke the unique emotional and sensory experience of BMW Technology alongside a showcase of the best creative talent out there.”