We saw an absolutely genius Honda Civic Type R ad, The Other Side, a little while ago, and it sure was swell, what with the dark and light sides of the same character. The car was pretty grand, too. Except there's one small problem with that. It turns out the car didn't exist.
Let me be clear for a minute here – Honda is definitely going to make a Honda Civic Type R, so it's not like the ad itself was fake. And in some scenes in the video, there was an actual vehicle, just dressed up with a blend of real and computer-generated accoutrements. But in other scenes, the whole Type R itself only existed in a virtual state. As VFX shop The Mill explains in the video description:
The Mill worked with Wieden & Kennedy, Stink Digital and Somesuch director Daniel Wolfe to create Honda's online interactive film launching its high-performance Civic Type R model. Ahead of the automobile's launch, The Mill's 3D team carefully crafted the red Type R model entirely in CG for the film and the expert Flame team seamlessly composited the CG vehicle into the night-time narrative to match perfectly with our hero's daytime alter-ego.
And that's almost creepy, in a way. To be completely honest, I was totally fooled. At no point, while watching the video and furiously mashing my R key, did I question the existence of the car. I just figured it was a pre-production model or something that Honda gave to the ad creators real quick to shoot everything.
But maybe I should be questioning the existence of lots of things.
Makes u think.