Tool’s experimental car commercial explores AI and live action production
The new experimental film, which focuses on the Land Rover Defender, is co-directed by Ben Tricklebank and Tool-founder Erich Joiner.
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Tool, a production company at the forefront of integrating AI into the traditional production pipeline, has rolled out a new experimental spot that offers a powerful proof of concept.
The new experimental film, which focuses on the Land Rover Defender, is co-directed by Ben Tricklebank and Tool-founder Erich Joiner. And while the spot was developed to experiment with new AI capabilities, it’s centered on what’s always been at the heart of successful advertising, a great creative idea and brand storytelling.
The :45 experimental film, Who Says Cars Can’t Dream, features the Land Rover Defender and its adventurous nature in a fun and playful way.
The directors wrote a script about a Defender that is tired of its suburban, monotonous life, wondering … “what if?” a car can dream? Where would it want to go? What would it do? This Defender “lives” in a major metropolitan area, goes to and from work, manages grocery runs, drives to restaurants and very capably handles all the other everyday life activities it’s owner requires. But what it really wants is to unleash its inner adventure. To run free. To go off-roading, to the mountains, driving through mud and snow.
Credits
powered by
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- Production Company Tool
- Director Ben Tricklebank
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Credits
powered by
- Production Company Tool
- Director Ben Tricklebank
- Post Company Therapy Studios
- Sound Design Therapy Studios
- Director Erich Joiner
- Executive Producer Dustin Callif
- Head of Production Amy DeLossa
- DP Justin Gurnari
- Editor Doobie White
- Executive Producer Margaret Ward
- Colorist Omar Inguanzo
- Sound Designer Dillon Cahill
- Sound Designer Dori Holly
- Composer Marco Lehmann
Credits
powered by
- Production Company Tool
- Director Ben Tricklebank
- Post Company Therapy Studios
- Sound Design Therapy Studios
- Director Erich Joiner
- Executive Producer Dustin Callif
- Head of Production Amy DeLossa
- DP Justin Gurnari
- Editor Doobie White
- Executive Producer Margaret Ward
- Colorist Omar Inguanzo
- Sound Designer Dillon Cahill
- Sound Designer Dori Holly
- Composer Marco Lehmann
Tool has been at the heart of two of the industry’s most discussed early AI-meets-production projects, most notably Under Armour’s Forever is Made Now and Starburst's Different Every Time. Their team has also been traveling the country meeting with brands and agencies about how they can leverage AI in their marketing programs.
This new film was developed to explore several of the most commonly asked questions from those conversations: “How can we apply AI to our commercial content production process?”, “Can AI deliver high-quality brand storytelling and fidelity?”, and “Will AI allow us to be more efficient?”
Rather than rushing out to create everything using only AI, Tool took an approach that would use AI to provide a production solution for specific portions of the spot that they felt it could deliver to the standards brands expect with commercial content.
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Tool started by looking at what AI and Live-Action do well. GenAI platforms like Runway, Kling and Midjourney have gotten to a place where users can generate photo-real images and add realistic motion to them. Where GenAI video is not strong is with human performance and consistency of a moving product (e.g., a car).
Taking this into account, Tool wanted to produce a car commercial that borrowed production techniques from each, while allowing themselves to create a spot that would maintain the level of brand storytelling and fidelity that a major brand would be happy with.
The team shot for one day, they estimate this production would have taken several additional days of shooting if they had taken the traditional route. On the day of the shoot, Tool focused on telling the parts of the story that they didn’t feel that AI can currently achieve – human performance and capturing the Defender in motion.
Taking a hybrid approach allowed Tool to use the best of what Live-Action and AI allows for in creating commercial content. This approach allowed Tool to take a 1 day shoot and mix the footage with an AI approach that Tool used to generate all of the driving footage. This gave them a larger range of location and weather conditions that didn’t require travel and extensive VFX.
The process rolled out as follows: generating imagery, creating a photo-real Defender, adding motion to the imagery, upscaling the content, and versioning and personalising the spots. In total, AI generated content made up about 50% of the visuals used in the final spot.
