The 3^rd Lexus Amazing in Motion project is on YouTube, and like its predecessors, Steps and Swarm, new film Strobe has two behind-the-scenes videos in its entourage. These are the important parts of the campaign:

Watch Strobe: Lighting motion

and Strobe:  Engineering motion

CHI+Partners creative director, Monty Verdi, explained, “A priority has been to make productions look as slick as possible. But at the same time, equally important has been to show the effort, precision, and focus that went into creating for real each end result – which is where the making of documentaries come in.”

The strategy behind Amazing in Motion, which is now two years old, is to give Lexus a creative platform on which to demonstrate its “imagination, innovation, and design excellence.” [John Thomson, Lexus International general manager, global branding]

“Lexus cars have always been the main strategic focus of our communications, and that will always be the case. However, Amazing in Motion presents an additional layer of communications showcasing the creative imagination at the heart of the Lexus brand via executing ambitious projects, done for real. Our Amazing in Motion Strobe campaign is part of our overall strategy to show a more emotional side of our brand,” Thompson explained.

Each film is a demonstration of remarkable things in motion achieved for real – without relying on special effects. In Steps, the two 4 metre tall puppets were brought to life through sculpture and choreography. And Swarm’s mini quadcopter robots were created with engineering and coding.

In Strobe a ‘lightman’ travels across Kuala Lumpur’s CBD at night in the most spectacular way possible.

The film was directed by Adam Berg of Stink Productions. Dozens of stuntmen and acrobats dressed in LED suits took part in creating the illusion, which used complex rigging and in-camera effects – but no CGI.

Hollywood costume designer, Vin Burnham, and technical director, Adam Wright, created a state of the art LED suit with a wireless lighting control system that allowed each lightman to light up in perfect sequence. Each suit contained 1,680 LED lights and was designed to cue distinctive Lexus product features such as the cars’ spindle grille.

Preceding the shoot were five rehearsal days in a warehouse in Kuala Lumpur. Each of the ad’s scenes was recreated to make sure that every lightman was at the right height and position to create the illusion of movement. Filming then took place over seven back-to-back nights. A team of 40 riggers, who specialise in big stunts and martial arts films that use rigging to suspend performers from wires, was brought in from Thailand. They built vast scaffolding rigs from which the stuntmen were hung from wires.

The crew had to deal with 40C heat and humidity on the shoot days. And time constraints – getting scenes that required seven hour set-ups shot before dawn and before the batteries in the suits had to be recharged. Performers had the added stress of wearing lightsuits made of seven layers that were heating up as light travelled through them. And the physcial demands of the motion sequences. Some were kept suspended for lengthy periods upside down or with individual limbs held in precise positions by wires. Creating a lightsuit that would work underwater was another technical challenge a all the electronics had to be sealed off.