We were finally able to catch up with director of photography Brad Kremer, who shot this slick Porsche commercial for a Chicago Porsche dealer, to feature his awesome write-up.

Credits
Tytan Ad Group
tytanadgroup.com/
Director/DP: Brad Kremer
Creative Director: Scott Jacobs
Executive Director: Jim Stone
Director of Post Production: Aaron Gravit

Brad Kremer Films

Here is his write-up:
Originally Loeber Motors came to us wanting to be re-branded. They wanted to do something that placed them on top of their market, which is Chicago. So we came up with a few ideas along those lines.

This is the first spot we have created for them. The basic idea was to attach Loeber to Chicago so that when people “think of Porsche of Chicago, they think… Loeber Motors.” Scott Jacobs, the creative director at TYTAN, and jim Stone, the executive producer, came up with the line “Porsche or Nothing”. Using these two ideas we set out to make a commercial, and more so, a completely re-branded destination for Porsche in Chicago..

We wanted something that would show off the 2010 Porsche Panamera in a singular fashion. A spot that would catch people’s attention and get them excited. So we decided to shoot a contrasting spot with fast cuts and a loud automotive “beast”…. with smooth, quiet, city shots. The city becomes just as much a star in the spot as the car itself.

We shot the car shots at a track just outside Chicago called Autobahn Country Club. It’s like a golf course, but for people who like to drive really, REALLY fast cars. We got really lucky with the weather. It snow just enough the night before to create a pristine layer of pure, virgin snow.

I chose to shoot this spot with the Canon 5DmarkII because of the versatility. I knew I could get the quality that I needed out of it. And it allowed me to change angles quickly. We only had the track for a single day, and in order to get everything I needed, we had to move fast; Sometimes having two cameras mounted on the car at the same time. Other cameras would have taken too long to set up and, as a result, we would have trumped many opportunities.

The first order of business was the mounted car shots. I used a package from Film Tools. A set of vacuum mounts, bars and cheese plate. It worked great. And most importantly it kept the camera on the car, at least for now….

Next we mounted the 5DmarkII on a jimmy jib and put it in the back of a truck. First we had the Porsche slide around a corner a few times with the jib arm over top. Once that was in the bag, we proceeded to have the truck race around the track, with me in the back controlling the jib arm and the Porsche chasing us. All this with a fresh layer of snow. If this sounds a bit sketchy to you, you would be right. I almost fell out of the back of the truck a couple times.

The we got a grip of ground shots on tripods from all angles around the track. But we ended up using only one of them…. the first shot.

Our goal for day two was the city interior shots. We wanted to feel the intensity of being in the middle of downtown Chicago. So we mounted two cameras on top of our car, looking up to the top of the skyscrapers and drove around downtown. At one point, one of our cameras fell off the car and bounced around in an intersection. It stayed on just fine at 70mph the day before. But 25mph through downtown Chicago was just too much I guess.

So after we got all the footage in the can we came back to begin the edit. We did some rough cuts to get the pacing of it first. And then came the hard part. The track is actually in the middle of nowhere and it has nothing in the background. So we took photos of the Chicago skyline and replaced the nothingness background with the skyline. A little color grading, some clever keying and masking, a touch of some snow with Particular 2 and you get the final shot. Sounds easy right? Well some shots were easier than others. And don’t ask how difficult it was to mask out the helicopters hanging the text in the city. Haha! But seriously, by using Particular 2 it gave us the control and flexibility needed to make the snow really dance and the Loeber Logo really shine. Some serious frame fu**ing as well wasn’t a bad idea either.

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