After four months of previs work and 126 layout attempts in 3D, Gorgeous director Chris Palmer and Glassworks CD Jordi Bares finally nailed the recursive and hypnotic three-dimensional Droste Effect (where a picture appears within itself ad infinitum) required to build “The Endless Road” for Honda’s CR-V thru mcgarrybowen.

Jordi Bares: “There are very few projects in which the creative demands such a technical effort as to challenge every single artist to their limit. This felt like a Russian Doll; one challenge’s solution would open up another.

“This digital campaign is the world’s first endless online commercial (intelligently detecting your location’s weather and lighting and playing accordingly), so everything from lighting set ups to camera moves needed military planning and precision.

Watch behind the scenes:

“With imposing weather at the South Dakota Pigtail Bridge location and a seriously ambitious camera move in the pipes, we moved towards using a miniature set augmented with CG. But, before the team at the Magic Film Company were able to get to work on building their 1:10 scale model, technical puzzles needed solving.

“Indeed, increasingly common for Glassworks, this project became almost as significant for us for its pre-production as post. Nothing could be booked, green lit or filmed before the animatic was perfected. It became the entire production’s Bible, a computer-generated version of what we’d shoot.

“It enabled control over elements we could never have had on location; move, scale, speed, angle, light and weather were now malleable. With algorithms flying around the place, it’s been a bit like firing a PhD Maths textbook at a risk assessment form in the Large Hadron Collider.

“It is a staggering accomplishment, a highly sophisticated and truly collaborative piece of filmmaking. When something so complex looks this smooth, we can’t help but feel proud. It’s the reason we wanted to work in VFX in the first place.

Watch the finished spot:

Agency: mcgarrybowen
ECD Angus Macadam Paul Jordan
Creative Team: Charlotte Watmough, Holly Fallows
Producer: Sian Parker

Production: Gorgeous
Director Chris Palmer
Executive Producer Rupert Smythe
Editor Scot Crane

Post Production Glassworks & FaTiBoo
Flame Lewis Saunders
Creative Director (3D) Jordi Bares @ Glassworks
Colourist Seamus O’Kane @ The Mill
Digital Production MediaMonks
Executive Producer: Wouter Smit
Producer: Rodrigo Alberini
Creative Directors: Jon Biggs, Alex Danklof
Project Manager: Sylvia van der Leen

Audio Production Munzie Thind @ Grand Central
Music Twisted Nerve Main Theme
Composer/Arranger Bernard Herrmann