Stuart Jennings « I Design Your Eyes

Zoic Races Past ‘Dominoes’ Success with ESPN NASCAR ‘Variables’

Posted by Erik Even in I Design Your Eyes on May 14, 2010

In February, Zoic’s “Dominoes” spot for the NASCAR Nationwide Series broke new ground in computer graphics for television. (Read the story here.) Now the Culver City, California-based studio has produced the second spot in the series, which retains the visual style of “Dominoes” but is quite different in story and tone.

The new spot, entitled “Variables,” is the story of the things the drivers and pit crew can’t plan for during a race, according to Zoic executive creative director Loni Peristere, “and how those variables affect the outcome of the race – who’s going to win, who’s going to lose.”

Watch “Variables” on ZoicStudios.com

The origins of “Variables” go back to the beginnings of the campaign. “The Nationwide campaign is a series of commercials that were originally pitched and presented by [New York-based advertising agency] Wieden+Kennedy,” Peristere says, “that we at Zoic partnered on for the duration of the campaign. We started in the earlier part of November last year, with [Wieden+Kennedy producer] Dan Blaney, [art director] Cyrus Coulter, [writer] Luke Evans, and Heather Larimer, under the auspices of Stuart Jennings, our creative director from ESPN.”

“The good thing about Wieden+Kennedy is that the producer is looked at as a ‘third creative,’” says Blaney. “I have that point of view throughout the process. That’s important to me.”

“We worked with the Wieden+Kennedy team to come up with the look, tone and feel for not only the commercials but for the entire campaign,” Peristere says. “If you see the Nationwide footage on ESPN right now, you’ll see our style, the stark black & white with blue highlights, used throughout the promotional material in the campaign. We worked originally with [Zoic creative director] Derich Wittliff and Darrin Isono to create keyframes that became the foundation of the look, feel and tone of the entire campaign.”

Footage of the racers for both spots was shot on location in Florida at the close of last year’s Nationwide Series. “We picked up the actors the day after their very last race of the season,” Peristere says. “And Kyle Busch, the star of ‘Variables,’ had just won the championship. We got to play with him a little bit, and his cohorts, on the shoot day, which was really fun because they were coming off of a long night of revelry.

“A big part of the realism for the drivers’ performances was rooted in my direction on set, where we were walking these guys through the variations of their performances. We had them run through directions like, what do you say to your driver? How do you feel when someone is spinning out right in front of you? When your car is not functioning? How do you react? We went through a series of facial expressions, both passive and active in performance, to capture the fixes that we needed for the spot.

“Both Wieden+Kennedy, and Stuart and his entire team at ESPN, were incredibly gracious with their trust. When we got into Editorial, it allowed [Zoic senior editor] Dmitri Gueer and I to choose the facial expressions we felt would convey the story to the utmost.”

Gueer adds that when it came to choosing the drivers’ performances, “they had to be identical to what the drivers would do on a real racetrack. But the big challenge was that you could take a greenscreen of the driver’s performance, cut it into the offline and go: “This is going to work great!” Then look at it in the dailies after it’s gone through CG and all of a sudden realize that it no longer works because it is a mapped image that lives in its own environment.

“I really wanted drivers’ performances to work because it is always about never stopping to want something perfect,” Gueer continues, “so I think I drove our CG guys absolutely bonkers because I kept feeding them non-stop new drivers’ takes to run a test on. In the end I was extremely pleased with how the drivers’ shots worked out. Our CG artists did an amazing job!

I am pretty positive that any NASCAR fan could take a look at the spot now and say ‘that’s totally real, I’m right there with that driver.’”

Peristere points out the differences between the spots. “’Dominoes’ is about an event, this giant crash, and having the wherewithal within the context of a giant 40-car pileup to know how to navigate that destruction.

“‘Variables’ is really about the race; it’s about the nuances of the drivers themselves, and how they react to variables on the track they cannot foresee; and it’s these kinds of qualities that make them great drivers. ‘Variables’ takes place from the white flag to the chequered flag. It’s one lap that we’re examining in great detail.”

“I think the two spots are totally different,” says writer Evans. “‘Dominoes’ has that epic crash in bullet time, everything fades out, and comes back full speed at the end; you have that lull in the middle, that moment where you have to get you bearings. Whereas in ‘Variables’ it’s a storyline from beginning to end. Right away you have to be along for the ride, and follow these details that are happening to get the story.”

Peristere laughs that “Dmitri, our crazy editor, had a lot to construct here; because the storytelling in a 30-second spot, especially in the context of a race, is really hard to track — especially here where it’s not just one event, it’s an entire lap, and you have multiple events. There was a lot of pack in, and Dmitri did a phenomenal job.”

Gueer adds: “From an Editorial standpoint, this particular spot was not easy because you have three drivers, three storylines, and a race that is going on in the background – and everyone wants to win! It’s a lot of story for 27 seconds to tell.

“This spot took a long time to edit and put together because we had to figure out how to tell a credible story, true to the whole NASCAR experience. You start in your mind by shaping the story based on what shots you would use to highlight certain points in the timeline. On top of that you have to have shots that establish the drivers and their identities by what they do on the racetrack, and how they drive or what strategy they use. Plus you have the overall story of everyone else trying to catch up to those drivers and avoid the big tire blow-up. How are you going to do that in such a short period of time, from a storytelling and from an artistic standpoint?

“Working out the timing takes a long time, so does maintaining pacing while telling the story of the three drivers. It was a pretty difficult task. Just like anything else the story has its own arcs, its highs and lows, and all of it had to flow from one cut to another.”

Gueer says that “Variables” was a very “Editorial-driven” spot. “The editor goes to the dailies and makes suggestions and has some creative notes, which is nothing unusual; but I would say that ‘Variables’ consumed me entirely, because everything in this spot is working on a cut-to-cut basis, and certain story points had to be hit for the spot to work, even the placement of the cars and where they are at a particular point in the story. But with great creative direction from Loni, our VFX and CG leads, and our great clients at Wieden+Kennedy, we were able accomplish a spot that I believe we can all be proud of!”

In the wake of the collaboration between Zoic and Wieden+Kennedy on “Dominoes,” a great deal of trust developed between the two teams. “Walking them through the process and working with [Wieden+Kennedy] on the first go-round,” Peristere says, “we set up the parameters and the workflow by which they would understand the second go-round. Honestly it was a very quiet second round of work, where they were partners with us, but not too invasive because they had experienced the process the first time.”

“There was so much work on ‘Dominoes,’” art director Coulter explains, “dialing in everything, the look and feel of it, how the animation plays out; so with ‘Variables’ it was nice, we were able to plug that stuff in and just let the story play out. With ‘Dominoes’ we were down there at Zoic working tirelessly to make everything come together – but with ‘Variables’ we just plugged everything in and it was great.”

Zoic commercial executive producer Erik Press says “the trust continued to grow with Wieden. I think ultimately everybody walked away very happy with the results of some really intense work and some big creative challenges on the CG end. We had a great working relationship with Wieden once again on this. I’m happy that they looked to us to find some creative solutions. We can’t wait to do more work with them.”

“We would all like there to be more,” Peristere says, “ if not on this campaign, certainly with the creative team we work with at Wieden. It was an incredible experience to work with them.”

Blaney says, “We put ‘Dominoes’ on such a pedestal, that our first reaction of ‘Variables’ was positive, but it took us a while to feel really excited about it. But for me, now looking at the finished ‘Variables,’ I can honestly say it may be my preferred spot out of the campaign.

“The client completely loved the it. They were blown away by ‘Dominoes’ — I don’t think anyone expected the end result to be that impressive. They took a leap of faith, especially trying an animation style that’s definitely innovative and new. They put a lot of trust into Loni. It was a very successful campaign for everyone involved.”

“The Nationwide Series is kind of like the ‘minor leagues’ of NASCAR,” Coulter says. “They’re putting a ton of money and effort into their Sprint Cup coverage, and for the Nationwide series there’s just not as big an expectation. So I think it’s really nice we had a come-from-behind win on this, making ‘Dominoes’ and ‘Variables’ so awesome.