For a NASCAR sequence in a recent Ford spot, lensed by director Jaume
(Collet-Serra) out of production company Believe, KromA took on the job
of creating photoreal cars that would be indistinguishable from the
real ones zooming around the track.

"For certain shots, it was too risky to get the cars in that close, and
they asked me to do it in CG," says KromA visual effects supervisor
Bert Yukich. "Sometimes we’d shoot the hero car practically and have
the cars he’s swerving into be CG, sometimes we made the hero car CG to
allow it to do more drastic swerving."

Using Softimage XSI and Avid DS for compositing, KromA also took HDR
(High Dynamic Range) photography of the real cars. "It captures more
color space than a standard picture," explains Yukich. "It’s kind of
like a digital negative. Building the model isn’t that difficult. It’s
all about texture and lighting, mixed with animation to make it
believable."

The most challenging shot was when a car swerves and actually bumps
another car. After working to get the car to sway and fishtail
correctly, they added dirt kicked up by the car and splattered on the
lens to sell the shot.

"These cars are designed to race, not to be filmed for a commercial,"
says Yukich. "When they race, the cars crash all the time and that’s
$500,000 and up per car. It’s not only less expensive in CG, but you
don’t put people at risk."