If there has been any good in Covid it is that it has stimulated creativity in people who would otherwise give all their talent to day jobs (with brief barriers and holy cows) and looking for day jobs with brief barriers and holy cows.
US Filmmaker, Logan McNay, has made a Porsche commercial in CG as a personal project. It’s ambitious (very ambitious) in scale. It stands out as a creative idea. And McNay made it entirely by himself. (The sound design was by Nikita Khotulev.)
“I wanted to do a car commercial but knew that if I wanted to have the proper production value of a real car spot, I’d need to have car commercial budget money, or do everything in VFX,” he told The Stable.
“The idea was to show the entire process of a Porsche being designed from concept to completion, from every stage, the initial clay build, to being torture-tested, crashed, flipped, frozen, heated, and finally raced on a test track. It was important to me that every move of the car coordinated with the rise and fall of the violin music.”
“I love seeing how things are designed and knowing the hard work that goes into crafting a premium product, so as a goal, I wanted to focus more on the process of how something is made rather than how cool it looks to drive, like most car commercials.”
It wasn’t easy (Not that you would have imagined it was.) “The entire project was made in CG using 3ds max and Vray. It took six months and over 250 hours of render time to put together the animation, smoke and water simulations, creation of 3d environments from scratch, and the compositing of a person to a CG scene,” McNay noted. “The smoke and water simulations were the biggest challenges in putting this project together. Having a VFX & cinematography background helped the most in creating this piece.”
McNay started making films at age 10 using Legos for stop motion animation. Since then his eclectic background in VFX, cinematography, and editing has won projects for brands such as Wendy’s, Winnebago and Sony. He works primarily as a DP, VFX artist, and director. “I’m an image-maker by trade and a storyteller by heart,” he says. And while this Covid project was a solo effort, “In the end, I enjoy working and collaborating with others to make projects the best they can be.”
Some of McNay’s other work includes:
An aviation piece for which he was director, DOP, VFX and editor.
A video that pays homage to female athletes, which he directed and edited:
