SANTA MONICA, CA - Ford Truck and Team Detroit turned to King And Country (www.kingandcountry.tv) director Efrain Montañez to elevate the car maker’s “Rant” campaign, which promotes the 2011 F150. The 2011 F150 is available with newly-developed engines that offer more torque without sacrificing fuel mileage.
King And Country collaborated with Team Detroit extensively on Kiddie Menu
and
Chokehold,
starting from the pitch process through pre-production, to the shoot, post and delivery. The campaign’s hyper-real look combines live action photography of the F150 trucks with CG environments.
“We didn’t want the truck to ever appear CG,” explains Montañez, “so we shot all truck footage using the Red Camera on location to obtain real-world reflections. We then were able to re-imagine those practical landscapes in CG and finesse the truck footage into those environments in a way that felt sincere and heroic.”
Kiddie Menu
takes place in a rugged desert landscape. The male voiceover rants about how truck buyers no longer have to sacrifice fuel economy for performance.
Chokehold
has a similar feel, noting that F150 owners will no longer feel like they are being beaten up when filling up their gas tanks.
For both spots, King And Country provided concepting, live action direction, production, 2D/3D animation, visual effects, and editing.
Michael Hackett cut the spots using Final Cut Pro 7.0. The studio used Maya and Cinema 4D for animation, along with Adobe’s After Effects CS5, Illustrator and Photoshop. Silhouette was used for compositing.
Montanez and John Hwang were lead designers on the project. Chris Kelley and Marcelo Petrella served as lead animators/compositors.
Hugo Cordinach, Aaron Knapp, Greg Mitchell, Tom Kenney and Nick Forshee all worked as animators/compositors. 3D animators included Cody Smith, Matt Foley, George Longo and Brian Weaver. Byrant Reif served as VFX supervisor/lead 3D animator. Drew Neujahr and Mariko Wilson were post producers. Cody Smith, Alex Reyes and Matt Foley handled modeling.
Beau Leon at New Hat served as colorist on the project. John Garstecki Music & Sound Design provided the audio, which was mixed by Rob Sayers at Sound Lounge.