Anthony Farquhar-Smith and Not To Scale New York team up with Johannes Leonardo to create the latest stop motion spot for Oscar Mayer. In an iconic showdown, a hot dog car and a cheese car collide together to create one of Oscar’s many meaty offerings, the Cheese Dog. With his flair for storytelling and masterful ability to inject personality into almost anything and everything, Not To Scale Director Anthony Farquhar-Smith was the perfect fit to transport Oscar Mayer's Cheese Dogs into the world of stop motion animation for the first time.

The Cheese Dog’s origin story traces back to the Wild West. Anthony's aesthetic approach channelled action and Western movies to recreate the tension of a classic standoff in a dusty desert. The spot is brimming with grit and adrenalin; with their big tires and exaggerated exhausts, the cars emulate the hot rods of the ‘70s to create that pop-art ‘Keep it Oscar’ aesthetic. No detail is spared in creating the set; with pickles standing tall like cacti and a lone tumbleweed frolicking in the wind, the attention to detail only adds to the humorous surrealism.

“There is a certain amount of surreal humor to be had from two food based cars facing off at each other, but by being faithful and accurate to the source material of Western and race movies, even more humor comes from trying to play something so silly in such a straight fashion.” – Anthony Farquhar-Smith

Ensuring maximum taste appeal of the Cheese Dog was always of the upmost importance. Anthony worked with a food stylist, John Bentham, and the model-makers to ensure the replica cars looked as tasty and realistic as possible. Yet, the real challenge was to capture an epic sense of scale via stop motion, requiring thorough collaboration with the camera department and the model-makers.

Dynamic camerawork, featuring rolling shots and extreme low angles on wide lenses, aims to enhance the adrenalin and imitate the classic car chases we see in the movies. At the same time, Anthony inserts his own creative flourishes for the climactic collision of the race cars, which is cleverly made entirely of cotton wool, before we finish on the heroic final frame of the Cheese Dog in all its sizzling and cheesy glory.

“Working in collaboration with the amazing filmmaker Anthony Farquhar-Smith, we created a high-octane need for cheese. And like the kind of insanely delicious product the Oscar Mayer Cheese Dog is, it shouldn’t work... but it totally does.” – Jeph Burton, Creative Director at Johannes Leonardo.