Honda Is Ready For Launch

Honda’s latest campaign blasted off online this morning and it’s a suitably out-of-this-world experience. Bringing together a fleet of the brand’s most iconic and innovative products including the Honda Jet, the new NSX hybrid and loveable robot ASIMO, the ambitious film recreates the excitement and challenging spirit of the 1970s US space exploration missions.

Below, Scott Dungate, creative director at Wieden + Kennedy London, tells us about going boldly where no Honda ad has gone before…

What was the brief for the film?

While Europeans perceive Honda cars as safe, efficient and reliable, they don’t see them as sporty, dynamic or edgy. But starting this year, Honda is re-shaping its offering in Europe, adding some powerful, sexy and adventurous vehicles to their fleet, such as the Civic Type R, the new H-RV and the upcoming NSX.

When you dig deeper into the company, you see that Honda was founded in racing, and that a ‘challenging spirit’ runs through all that it does. Aside from the new products, Honda is involved in many racing projects, like F1, and interesting fields such as aviation and humanoid robotics.

We felt Honda’s perception in Europe needed an update, especially when you look across the range of its engineering pursuits. No other car company dares to go into such diverse engineering projects. With this in mind, our mission became clear: showcase Honda’s exciting new fleet and convey the idea that Honda is driven by a challenging spirit in all it does.

How did you come up with the concept of space exploration?

The challenges of all of Honda’s products are different. For the Honda Jet, it’s the world’s first over-wing engine plane. For the NSX, it’s a hybrid that’s also a super car. For ASIMO, it’s a robot that can help people in a human way. At some point, we decided it would be great to have an icon that summed up the collective challenges and ambition of all these products.

We thought equating Honda’s product with space exploration - possibly the biggest expression of human endeavour - could work nicely. We noticed that when the fleet is put together and positioned in a certain way, it looked like a Honda Rocket.

It was potentially iconic, and had scope to tell an entertaining story that was far better than cars driving around European hillsides. It was worth pursuing.

The final film looks technically ambitious – what were the most difficult elements to bring to life?

Quite early on we decided that our Honda Rocket should be static, as we felt it would feel pretty hokey if it took off or sped down the runway. Plus poor ASIMO would technically be flattened by the oncoming fleet. We still needed to give the Honda Rocket all the energy and power of an actual Cape Canaveral launch, without the fleet actually moving. Tricky.

We watched every NASA space launch to date, noting things like the descending waves of liquid nitrogen, the smoke and sparks from pre-ignition and pogo-motion, the blurred vision suffered by astronauts at take off due to vibration. We also wanted to keep as much mechanical movement as possible, so we decided to make the wheels spin in the smoke, which looked great with the reflection in the road.

To achieve this sense of power and energy in the final picture, there had to be a combined effort between the director (Aoife McArdle), the DOP (John Lynch), the local Ukranian crew at Radioaktive and the art department - who did a great job on the models. Finally, a hell of a lot of work was done by The Mill, stitching it all together in post, especially given ASIMO, the Jet and the NSX were complete CGI rebuilds.

Overall, it came together pretty dynamically I think, for vehicles and props parked on an abandoned bridge in Kiev.

Sound design and music is always an integral part of Honda’s ads – how did you go about creating the soundscape of space?

Sound design is always very important and it’s something we take as seriously as the visuals on any job. Working with Factory, our old friends and partners on Honda projects, we went on our usual journey to work out what would work best. We tried pure sound design as well as various music tracks throughout. We ended up with a mixture of the two.

We started more cinematic and ‘sound-scapey’ but then used the music to accelerate the pace and emotion as we raced towards the final countdown. We added a lot of 1970s sci-fi sounds true to the cinematic genre, Moog synths and such, but were careful not to lose the humanity by going too cold or synthetic. We also selected classical musical tracks like Beethoven’s Symphony 5, which were recorded on the gold disc sent into space on NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, baking in a little space backstory for those who might notice.

Working with Siren, we then composed a soundscape of church organ tones for the first half of the film to help bridge the transition from largely sound design to big classical music. We always thought the ending should be pure sound design, using that lovely crackling distant rocket sound you hear when you watch a rocket launch on TV.

You’ve worked with Somesuch on previous Honda spots including The Other Side; what made you decide on Aoife McArdle as your director?

We always enjoy working with Somesuch as they always approach the job with what will be best for the work first. For this project, we approached a number of directors, including some big Hollywood names, as we really wanted the film to feel big and cinematic.

Aoife was in the mix as we were impressed with the work she’d done with U2 and her short films. She has a great eye for casting and creating believable characters and scenes, which we felt was important for our story. We also liked the grit and reality in much of her work, but she also had post production experience, which was equally important.

Her treatment was great but what impressed us most was how hungry and dedicated she was from start to finish. She really threw everything she had at it, and continued to throughout, despite some rather large detours along the way.