Supra

In 2019, Toyota released the most exciting car it’d made in recent history: The GR Supra. We needed a two-pronged strategy. SUPRA is an iconic name that shines a bright light on Toyota, and the Super Bowl was the perfect stage for it. 

Our junior team came up with the idea of treating the car like a pinball in a machine — a nod to the 1980s, when pinball machines were just as popular and iconic as the Supra. I used my editing skills to cut an action sequence to Pinball Wizard, which sold the spot.

My partner and I led the production, with the junior team alongside, learning. We got Mark Forster to direct it. He is German-born, raised in Switzerland. His right-hand VFX man was Michael Ralla (German), the cinematographer, Austrian, and my partner (German). Suffice to say, there was a lot of German spoken on set.

Spaceport America in New Mexico was our location — the building doubled as the back of the pinball machine, with the area in front filled with lighting rigs matching the CG previz to create in-camera reflections on the car. Everything was going great until suddenly intense wind gusts destroyed much of the set and made it unsafe to film. Two shots were missing, and with no budget for another shoot day, we had to rely on Michael and his team for a CG save. You tell me which ones they are.