Oh, the lengths some companies will go to in order to get their product in your face, and make you remember it… It doesn’t even matter what they’re selling, though, or how far-fetched the chosen means of promotion is, and all that should really matter is the quality of the final work.

And the latest promo shot for the upcoming Forza Motorsport 5 game, is indeed a quality piece of work. It is a bit contrived, if you stop and think about it, but the ingenuity shown in making it, the way in which it was shot and the resulting video are well worth your time.

If you haven’t heard of a zoetrope, it’s basically a primitive method of animation, that can be traced back to ancient China, and it uses slides and movement to create the illusion of motion. Imagine all of that today, but set around a racetrack, with a McLaren 12C as the camera car, Tanner Foust as the driver and hundreds of slides placed alongside the track so that when the car passes by (recording at 30 fps) it tricks the brain (and camera) into thinking it’s seeing actual movement.

What does it have to do with the Forza game? Well, not a lot, to be frank, and probably even better results could have been achieved around an oval, using a silent EV and a sound setup similar to this one, but then again, it’s still a notable achievement in the field of commercials as it is. It’s the first of the videos posted below – the others detail how it was made, but they’re actually part of the whole thing. This is a four-part ad.

By Andrei Nedelea

PHOTO GALLERY

Forza5-Zoetrope-1Forza5-Zoetrope-2Forza5-Zoetrope-3Forza5-Zoetrope-4Forza5-Zoetrope-5Forza5-Zoetrope-6Forza5-Zoetrope-7Forza5-Zoetrope-8

VIDEO