How The-Artery Crafted Sleek New Mercedes Spots Using Virtual Production

Five cars, three days, and 57 different elements for the volume stage are what Vico Sharabani and director, Yuval Levy, worked with, alongside the team at The-Artery led by ECD, Elad Offer, for the latest Mercedes spots. The attention-grabbing final videos elegantly conceal the high level of planning, technical skill, and creativity that went on behind the scenes to make them come to life.

The list of tools needed to translate creative ideas into spots in such a short amount of time is long: Houdini, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Flame, Nuke, Unreal Engine and RedShift, with extra help from machine learning tools like MidJourney, Stable Diffusion and Adobe Firefly. Plenty more tech was embedded in the XR stage itself to facilitate the production.

Vico notes that having control over the design, production, editorial, post, and VFX on the spots was a real highlight as it allowed the team to collaborate with the client without compromising on any element of their creative vision or the quality of the execution.

Today, LBB spoke to Yuval, Vico, and Elad to learn more about the craft of virtual production, the process that allowed the team to execute such a complex shoot on time and in good spirits, and the shared benefits of more creative control.

LBB> What was the brief from the client and what were your initial creative ideas? How did the concept develop from there?

TA> Each spot was based around a word used to trigger different feelings and emotions for the brand and specifically, the individual models and feature sets. This was further complemented by using colour to help communicate these attributes and to design the abstract backgrounds, along with the lighting and the camera movement, to best evoke the right feel and emotions.

We started workshopping through style frames, moving into motion which got us to the previz. From there we created the 57 elements to be used on the volume stage. We elected to use the volume stage so as to allow us to have an almost 360-degree view of the vehicles in their background environments.

LBB> Tell us about the prep process before the shoot - how long did it take and what was involved?

TA> We were handed some existing car footage as well as stock sites to work with and we augmented these with a live action shoot on a volume stage at Nant Studios in LA, for which we designed multiple backgrounds for each vehicle. Some were more scenic, some more heavily designed and tech-facing. The prep time was actually very short, a couple of weeks in the end, but the results were really amazing.

Above: Midjourney explorations by The-Artery's director, Yuval Levy.

LBB> You shot five cars over three days with over 57 different background environments. How did you utilise the team and technology to achieve so much in such a short space of time?

TA> This was really an all-out concerted effort using all the tools at our disposal and a few we brought on especially for the task. The coordination and tight project management via Shotgrid played a large part in being able to get everything done on time and available to us on set. We used Houdini, 3D Studio Max, Maya, Flame and Nuke together with Unreal Engine and real-time rendering on RedShift. We also used the latest cutting-edge machine learning tools - MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, Adobe Firefly and tools to up-res some of the video content to 8k. The XR stage itself has a bevy of real-time tools for camera tracking and display of the content, mostly Disguise. And lastly, we couldn't have transferred this much data around without Signiant. Photoshop was in the mix too.

Above: Midjourney explorations by The-Artery's director, Yuval Levy.

LBB> Can you share how you used machine learning tools in the process? What kind of prompts did you put in?

TA> We used AI for concept design and ideation, while looking for the visual vocabulary of the various spots. Eventually our human artists brought them together to feel like a cohesive campaign, and built them in 3D for complete animation. This assisted us in moving quickly into production.

LBB> What other challenges did you need to overcome in the making of this campaign?

TA> We shot five spots which in the written description sounded similar but were all unique and had their own look and feel. We also had to create all the environments, deliver those to the tech team on-stage, had a technical day on set while also moving through the prep and setup.

Additionally, we had inserts to light and shoot so we were working with an additional set-up throughout the two days on set.

The short time between award and prep certainly gave us some initial palpitations, but we soon found a groove and we had the benefit of working with a terrific team at Merkley, long-standing collaborators, with whom we can freely pass ideas and tests back and forth. Such a hands-on approach by all parties enabled us to be ready in good time with a host of terrific options extending through three lists: ‘must haves’, ‘nice to have’, and ‘if we have time’.

Logistically, we needed to shoot five cars with multiple backgrounds over two days. The team at Nant and their amazing studio really played a huge role in the smooth running of the schedule and they offered solid creative solutions whenever called upon.

LBB> What were your personal highlights?

TA> Getting on and shooting at the Nant Studios LED stage was a great treat. The 360-environment - when well planned - offers so much flexibility for the shoot.

LBB> What was your reaction to the finished work? Did it turn out as expected?

TA> We produced it all, so we were in control of the outcome and happy to see how all the pieces of the puzzle came together. The agency embraced a creative ‘workshop’ process they coined which allowed us to experiment and find visual connections and ideas throughout the process. Having control over design, production, editorial, post, and VFX, made it a joyful experience for all involved, while allowing for the opportunity to surprise the clients with improvements and adjustments along every step of the way.

Above: Midjourney explorations by The-Artery's director, Yuval Levy.

LBB> Tell us a little bit about the post-production process - how much was needed? Is it a shorter process compared to a more traditional car spot?

TA> There was a considerable amount of post. We started with cuts fashioned from the existing car material and whittled these edits down until we knew what we wanted to shoot on stage and what we should keep from what was provided. Effectively, we did previz in edit under the expert lead of Michael Elliot, our longstanding editorial collaborator through our long run with Mercedes, though of course we ran to the wire on the back end too. The shoot went so well, we were able to keep adding from that and reducing the stock that we initially had boarded. Along with the gargantuan design effort required to get us what we needed to shoot in time, no, it wasn’t shorter, but we took a ton away from this and will utilise what we gleaned for subsequent projects.

LBB> Why was having control over all elements of production and post-production such a benefit to all involved?

TA> The overall benefit was being able to manage and streamline the overall process between agency creative team, production and post-production. The turnaround on the project was quite limited and it was important to keep a positive and efficient workflow moving forward to make the delivery date.

LBB> Anything else you’d like to share?

TA> The teamwork with the agency and client, the contributions of a great DP, coupled with the technical and production collaboration with the Nant team, made this a fantastic project to be part of.