Tribal WW London Makes the Invisible Visible for Volkswagen

Volkswagen UK, Tribal Worldwide London and Marshmallow Laser Feast (MLF) have collaborated on an innovative launch campaign for the Volkswagen Passat by showcasing the car’s hidden assistance systems.

The Tribal Worldwide, London campaign - ‘Invisible Made Visible’- brings together the most advanced car technology with cutting edge filming techniques to tangibly visualise the car’s invisible data and intelligent sensors. Developed in partnership with Marshmallow Laser Feast, the studio shoot featured infrared sensors placed on cameras which were tracked by a Vicon rig. Positional data from this rig was translated in real-time, which in turn projected the CGI environment around the car. The end result is a suite of beautifully crafted moving images with perspective that perfectly matches the camera’s angle.

MLF created additional impact by filming the project as one continuous in-camera shot, with no post-production trickery. Projection and light were used to illustrate real-time scanned environments with which the car could interact. The content will be used across owned and paid digital ecosystems.

Silke Anderson, Volkswagen UK, Communications Manager said: “The Passat is the most important car we will launch this year, but so much of the technology it’s packed with is hidden from view. This makes it hard to showcase or demonstrate safely or effectively without using pure graphics. Using this innovative approach with projected light patterns we can not only create content which showcases the Passat’s amazing features, but also content which is really engaging and stunning from a purely aesthetic point of view.”

Victoria Buchanan, Creative Director at Tribal Worldwide, London, commented: “Volkswagen has produced one of the most advanced cars in its class so it was imperative that this collaboration between Tribal and MLF enabled us to push boundaries during the filming of this campaign, by projecting light around the car to demonstrate each of the Passat’s intelligent systems, in a way never seen before.”

Marshmallow Laser Feast’s creative director, Barney Steel, added: “This project was a brilliant opportunity to ambitiously fuse different state-of-the-art technologies in an inquisitive way. As a standalone project, it’s pretty mind-blowing in its own right. But what’s even more intriguing is the immersive possibilities that lay ahead.

“All credit to Tribal and Volkswagen for having the foresight to investigate technology opportunities with us in such a progressive way.”

The project unites some of film-making’s most advanced technologies and technologists including the clever boffins at Andy Serkis’ Imaginarium, MoCap, Vicon and real world LiDAR data. This technology is then brought together by MLF’s own software and hardware.

The all-new Volkswagen Passat, which went on sale in January, is available with a host of innovative features designed to offer driver and passengers the highest levels of safety, comfort, convenience and connectivity.  Many of these are invisible to the naked eye, but key to the Passat’s promise to define new vehicle class benchmarks through state of the art technology.