Throughout the course of the film, it appears as though there are two cars on the track at one time, although in reality there was only ever one. The team at The Mill used a combination of multiple camera passes as well as using photo-real, full CG cars to give the illusion that there were two cars on the track, racing head to head. Due to the exceptional speeds of both the Aston Martin Vulcan and Koenigsegg One:1 certain approaches to filming we required to ensure the most epic of shots were captured in the right way. For instance the aerial footage was captured via a helicopter rather than the more contemporary method of drones.
In collaboration with RewindFX, the teams created a race simulator for each driver to capture their perfect lap. Various equipment was used to obtain biometric data from the drivers in action, including heart rate, muscle tension and brain activity. The biometric data was captured live and visualised as real-time animated graphics in the lab and on the track to measure the effect of driving a real car in comparison to that of a simulated environment.
The Mill team then leaned on its robust photo-real CG car pipeline to manage the two unique, two and a half minute films, which gave the Director full flexibility when revising the look of the film throughout.
The Mill’s Creative Director Tom Wansbrough-Jones comments; “You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Castrol EDGE for allowing us to create such an exciting, action packed set of films involving two high speed super cars that had such a different look and feel to them. This is all about man, machine and oil working in sync with each other to create a story that you dream about as a child. Racing your own ghost car reminds me of playing ‘Super Mario Cart’ as a kid…although the stakes were slightly higher as these cars were a lot more pricey than your average Mario cart!"