Lexus has been long admired for its state-of-the-art engineering, effortless luxury and impeccable customer service, but ‘Amazing in Motion’ is a set of global projects which celebrate a more imaginative and creative side of the Lexus brand.
The latest in the campaign, STROBE, pays testament to Lexus’ culture of combining cutting-edge tech and design with a creative ambition that stretches beyond just their vehicles.
To showcase these imagination, innovation and design credentials, we suspended acrobats and stuntmen across Kuala Lumpur’s night skyline and lit them in succession to create the illusion of acrobatic motion at impressive speed. Poised across the rooftops of some of the city’s tallest buildings, the lightmen were dressed in bespoke LED lightsuits and controlled by a purpose-built lighting control system designed to make them strobe one by one in a domino-like effect. This real life performance produced the breath-taking journey of one illuminated figure moving through the city at night.
The journey of the lightmen is crafted to show that Lexus is dedicated to creating not just precisely engineered cars—but powerful experiences that move their consumers in new and exciting ways.
Creative Execution
Creating STROBE would have been easy using CGI, but that’s just not Lexus’ style. Everything is authentic, done for real, a genuine feat of engineering and design, which is why it was a must that everything was achieved in camera.
Each lightsuit used to create this illusion was designed specifically and comprised of 1680 LED lights. The suits were made of a complex seven individual layers, each performing a design or technology roll. Filming was incredibly physically demanding for the stuntmen, who were held up for long periods—some suspended upside down or with individual limbs held in precise positions by wires, with giant fans and air conditioning units needed to constantly cool them as the lights from the suits and the formidable 40 degree (Celsius, or over 100 degrees Fahrenheit) heat and humidity created near unbearable conditions for both cast and crew alike.
Every night, the crew battled to get the desired shots before the sun came up, and with the need for the motion to appear seamless on film, each stuntman had to be raised up and suspended individually to an an exact height and position, meaning some setups would take up to seven hours to get everyone into place.
The event required huge effort from a team of 40 engineers, suit technicians, wardrobe, film crew, Not to mention the extreme physical endurance of countless stuntmen suspended across the Kuala Lumpur skyline - that the result looks so effortless, truly is an achievement in production.