The vignette-style commercial showcases the “Breadth of Product” Polaris offers and highlights several models in the environments they were designed for. The spot opens with the company’s trail-dominating legend, the Sportsman XP 850, cutting through a path in the woods to join other Polaris off-road vehicles in a high-country clearing. Next, the voiceover spotlights the new Ranger 500 EFI, driving into a barn, busy with farm chores, that launches a new group of value-minded Polaris workhorses. It closes with hunters in camouflage driving a Ranger XP 800, the vehicle that heads up a new team of hard-working hunting machines. The tag line, “Polaris: Hardest working, smoothest riding,” brings home the commercial’s message.
“Breadth of Product” was shot on location on a Sony HDCAM SR 4:4:4. Additional stills of sky and clouds were captured with Canon’s EOS 5D Mark II and used for the time-lapse sky scenes.
Assistant colorist Matthew Jensen loaded all the footage onto the Galaxy Aurora SAN, and from there everything was logged and given to C+S editor Carrie Shanahan.
C+S award-winning colorist, Sue, noted, “The original footage was exposed to give me the greatest flexibility for color correction in post. But, as a result, the dailies looked a bit flat. Because we had already captured the forage, the client was able to come into the color suite, and start working on fine-tuning the color looks before the spot was cut – which gave us a head-start when final edit was approved.”
“Our clients, The Integer Group’s Robert Stocking and Ned Connelly, wanted slightly different looks for the different seasons of the year. For the hunting scenario, we first tried going warm and fall-like tones, and then a cool silvery look,” SUE recalls. “We liked the cooler look, but ended up brightening and warming it slightly. We also changed the color of several of the vehicles, making two red ones green.”
The spot marked the first time that Sue employed the tracking and matting software on her new Image Systems‘ Nucoda Film Master color correction system.
“This is new technology and I’m still experimenting with it, but this project really showed what this system brings to the table,” said Sue. “The difference between the ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ is quite impressive. All the scenes had the blackest parts lifted to show detail on the underside of the vehicles. In addition we paid special attention to the skies and made subtle tweaks on the product color.”
Adam Celt tracked in product supers for the three shots that had dynamic camera moves. Mark Anderson created the other static supers. Carrie Shanahan, who edited the original: 30 spot, recently cut a :60 version for the client. Donna Drewick executive produced for CRASH+SUES.
