SOMETIMES ELECTRIC. ALWAYS BMW.

TitleSOMETIMES ELECTRIC. ALWAYS BMW.
BrandBMW UK
Product/ServiceBMW PHEV
Category A05. Cinematography
Entrant FCB INFERNO London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation FCB INFERNO London, UNITED KINGDOM
Media Placement WAVEMAKER London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production ICONOCLAST London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production 2 CUT + RUN London, UNITED KINGDOM
Post Production THE MILL London, UNITED KINGDOM
Post Production 2 WAVE STUDIOS London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Owen Lee FCB Inferno Chief Creative Officer
Ben Usher FCB Inferno Associate Creative Director
Rob Farren FCB Inferno Associate Creative Director
David Napier FCB Inferno Strategy Partner
Nikki Chapman FCB Inferno Director of Production
Charlie Coombes FCB Inferno Producer
Katy Wright FCB Inferno Managing Partner
Helena Georghiou FCB Inferno Business Director
Rob Stockton FCB Inferno Account Director
Rob Chiu Iconoclast Films Director
Tom Knight Iconoclast Films Executive Producer
Mikey Levelle Iconoclast Films Producer
James Rose Cut & Run Editor
Martin Leitner Wave Studios Engineer

Write a short summary of what happens in the film

We open on a car’s headlights as it drives through a forest at night. We see its silhouette through the dark tree trunks. As a voice muses “Petrol, or electric” the car glows with a pure white light, illuminating the road and fields around it. It makes its way into an empty city, streetlights revealing that it is a BMW PHEV (Plug-in hybrid electric vehicle). The voice asks itself again “Petrol, or electric”, and the car glows once more. A couple in a café, a man in the street are among those who notice, as the car’s light plays across their faces. The voice comes to a revelation, “Why choose?”, and we see the car illuminate one final time. From above, we slowly zoom out as the glowing BMW is framed by the city lights. The voice finishes by saying “Discover the BMW plug-in hybrid range.” “Sometimes electric. Always BMW.”

Cultural / Context information for the jury

More and more people are considering going electric with their next car purchase, but many are not ready to make the leap to fully electric. There are also many different types of hybrids, which can be confusing for potential customers who want to take that first step towards electric driving. We wanted to let drivers know that BMW offers a range of Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEVs) which can instantly switch from a petrol engine to an electric motor, to offer the best of both worlds. Our campaign had to cut through. So we created a strikingly simple visual metaphor. In our film, when a BMW PHEV switches from petrol to electric, it glows with a pure white light. When it changes back to petrol, the light disappears. In other words, the car is “Sometimes electric. Always BMW.”

Tell the jury anything relevant about the cinematography.

The cinematography in this film is about light and darkness. In most car adverts the car is lit to make it desirable, in ours the car itself would be the light source. It would have been easier to use CG, but we captured as much in camera as possible. The production included a lot of firsts. A pioneering LED lighting rig, comprising thousands of diodes, was custom built and painstakingly attached to the car by hand, to give us real illumination. A power source was integrated into the vehicle so we could time the glow to the millisecond. An LF anamorphic lens normally used for IMAX gave us more picture in every frame. To achieve the scale of shot we wanted, we flew a camera drone between the buildings of a working city. And for more unusual camera angles, we hired a rollerblading former X Games athlete as a cameraman.