Johnny Hardstaff Shows Feelings for Honda

Director Johnny Hardstaff's latest spot for the Honda Civic is best viewed on the big screen but is still visually stunning whichever way it plays out. Slowing the act of driving to hone in on the different facets and feelings involved with the experience, the commercial is testament to the director/designer's creative vision and meticulous eye for detail.

Coming together as a technical collaboration between Wieden+Kennedy London, Hardstaff's former stable RSA (he is now represented by Academy Films) and VFX house MPC, the result is a beautiful film for the brand to deliver the message that driving is about building a feeling. Below, the director elaborates on the campaign and his way of working, touching on the science behind the ad, what went into the production and his ambitions with Academy.

Honda is known for top creative work; why did this particular script appeal?

W+K scripts are always very interesting, but what I like to do whatever the script and no matter where it has come from is weigh up the possibility of making something not only better than the last ad I made but hopefully completely different too. Feeling felt right; super smart creatives, ECD Scott Dungate, who I admire, plus a client whose comfort with choosing original over safe I respect.

The Feeling script was whip-smart from the off and very hard to say no to, but I’m definitely learning to trust my gut. Scripts can always be honed and tuned, sometimes completely reinvented; the question is more ‘do the conditions exist where I stand a good chance of making something special?’

What did you feel you could bring to the project and how much did you move the idea along from when it was handed to you?

Conceptually Ben [Shaffery] and Max [Batten] had it nailed down in a good way. The core idea barely budged from exactly where they had it on day one. This gave me the room to focus, to dig in and design it, not just in the sense of how it looks, though aesthetics are obviously a massive part of my work and my background, but also design its mood and pace in order to hopefully evoke some kind of warmth and beauty in all this technology. Both W+K and I were the custodians of the story in all of this, and we worked closely as a team throughout.

It looks like a really technical job. Tell us about your approach, technique and the stages involved?

Yes! It was a little complex. I love a head scratcher of a project. I wanted to shoot as much as possible in-camera and of course to freeze speeding cars you need to shoot at very high frame rates. So that meant high-speed cameras, but I also wanted to move around the scenes very fast as the cars raced through.

Now, obviously you can’t have speeding cars ploughing through scenes full of people so I needed to shoot passes. This all suggested motion control, except that motion control isn’t that fast and we needed to shoot up a mountain, in a remote valley and on a rain lashed night-time motorway, all in winter. So what I did was get hold of the lightweight hi-speed Bolt arm and repurpose it as a motion control rig. We dragged the Bolt (normally used for hi-speed one-take liquid pack shot effects) around Spain, and though it wasn’t exactly perfect motion control, MPC absolutely nailed it with their technical genius and made the passes stitch together perfectly.

MPC were essential in all of this. They took it from there and started working in all of the many CG elements we needed, and did so very beautifully, topped off with what I think is a very nice grade from Jean-Clement [Soret].

How much would you say it’s a typical Johnny Hardstaff piece, considering the style and aesthetic?

What I wanted was for this ad to look like nothing else out there, to have its own visual language. Each project I undertake I try to approach differently. Kenco was effectively doco style shot in the favela in Central America. Smirnoff was playfully camp fantasy set builds. Honda Feeling is actually more refined and classical than I might normally conjure. It’s whatever suits the project. When you’re design trained, you try to visually speak in a bespoke language for each project. That said, I’m sure my imprint is in there all the same, but as much as I can I try to remove my own tastes from the desired result and simply aim for trying to make something excellent on its own unique terms.

The sound is quite unique too; how did you choose it and did that aspect come into your head from the moment you settled on the idea?

The sound design was largely driven by the creatives and Scott at W+K. We all agreed throughout as to what the general mood should be, and it seemed to us obvious in a good way that the soundtrack should be almost frozen sounds that build a musical track approaching this kind of mood and pace, but in this instance it really was their tenacity that got them the result they were after. Max and Ben talked of a CD skipping. This was their reference. I think it led to the right soundtrack.

Tell us about actually filming the ad on the mountain and roads…

Cold. Just cold. Bitterly so. Next time a script says ‘rainy motorway at night’ I will definitely reconsider. We like to shoot in the tropics! But beyond the cold it was a pleasure. Annabel Ridley, my esteemed producer, and I always have lovely shoots with the best crew. It was hard work but a real pleasure.

Looking to the future, you’ve just signed for Academy; tell us how the move came about and what you’re hoping to achieve with the company?

Yes. It was just time to refresh. My ambition isn’t to keep on doing the same thing in advertising, but rather to try and reinvent what I do each and every time. I don’t want to be a jobbing hack, I want to make truly excellent ads and I would much rather make nothing at all than turn in a poor job. So, it’s simply time to reinvigorate and challenge myself. For a late starter, I feel like I’m just getting into my stride and Academy strike me as a production company that shares my ambition to make truly pivotal work. Why make crap when you can make great? Academy understands this more than anyone. It really is death or glory.