Castrol 'Cheetah'

Framestore has helped pit nature against engineering for Howard Greenhalgh, Ogilvy Singapore and Castrol. The result is a dramatic competition between a Castrol powered motorbike and the world’s fastest land creature, a cheetah.

The commercial was shot on location in South Africa, where trained cheetahs and the perfect race course could be sourced. VFX -supervised by Framestore’s Tim Osborne, the shoot’s main challenge was in overcoming the inherent safety and logistical issues of having a cheetah run side-by-side with a speeding motorbike. This was made more problematic by the fact that cheetahs can’t run on concrete. The initial solution was to shoot separate plates of the cheetah running on carpet and remove the cheetah-friendly surface in post. But once on-set, the team decided the carpet added an interesting dimension, whilst nodding to the Castrol brand’s respect for the animal and its safety.

So, all was going well until the four trained cheetahs went on strike, deciding not to run in the race track’s alien environment, despite the team in trying a variety of techniques that included winches, quad bikes, and even a low flying helicopter. Eventually a decision was taken to film the cheetahs in their natural setting after shooting all the background plates of the motorbike on the race course.

Once returned to home turf, the cheetahs showed-off their running prowess. The team chose hero plates to match camera and lighting information. The cheetahs couldn’t be tracked with a camera vehicle so long lenses were used, meaning most running shots had to be hand-rotoscoped and placed into the moving plates. A minimum of four cameras were used for each shot, in some cases seven; with the cameras ranging from Phantom to Alexa to Go-Pro. This meant great material could be captured from several viewpoints. The editor was on location to start cutting rushes so the production could be completed in as short a time as possible.

Back in London, the final VFX process was led by Tim Osborne and involved telecine from Dave Ludlam before going into Flame and 2D to place the cheetah into the bike plates. The composited plates were perfected by adding skies, flares, lasers and multiplying up the lights. As a global campaign, many pack variants were required, as well as an entire CG engine demo sequence which was created by Framestore’s Johnny Hann and his team in just two weeks. Producer Emma Malpass drafted in help from Chris Redding, Steph Mills and Sav Nagi to deliver the final 32 masters. Castrol and Ogilvy were so delighted with the final results that Framestore was immediately commissioned to create a longer version.