ABOUT

BEHIND THE SCENES ON NISSAN'S LARGER-THAN-LIFE ZOETROPE

Imagine this: 450m of wall in a hot desert, clad with 150 illustrated frames, each one printed out 3m by 2m in size. Nissan’s all-electric ARIYA drives past, camera attached to the bonnet, capturing footage as it goes. The result? A larger-than-life Zoetrope. (In its traditional form, an optical cylinder, which, when spun, gives the illusion of continuous motion.)

To capture the 150 beautifully illustrated Japanese-style frames in camera with pinpoint accuracy, we worked with Justin Pentecost, a renowned motion control and stop frame animation expert to develop a custom system using an off the shelf camera. Connected to a flash and set up with incredible precision to capture exactly five frames per second, the camera was attached to the bonnet of the car to allow us to take photos of each cell animation as the vehicle made its way down the track.

It was vital that we hit a consistent speed to capture the content accurately - and with only 5 minutes of perfect light to work with, there was no room for error. Despite having such a small window of time to pull off an incredibly complicated mission, the capture was perfectly executed to create the ultimate high-speed Zoetrope.