iris Worldwide creates glass Formula One race car to promote drink and drive awareness

iris Worldwide, Singapore have partnered with a D&AD black pencil winning Director to create a 90-second film titled The Glass Car.  The film is the latest instalment from Johnnie Walker’s Responsible Drinking global initiative – Join The Pact.

This commercial acts as a reminder of the fragility of human life as it asks people to make the commitment to never drink and drive.

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Its release coincides with the final 2013 Formula One race in Brazil and end of year festivities around the globe. The hyper-real CGI film was written by iris Worldwide Creative Director, Grant Hunter and directed by Russell Appleford. It features the McLaren Technology Centre (headquarters for the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One team) modelled in CGI with an astounding amount of detail – accurate to within 3mm.

The centerpiece of the film is a full-scale reconstruction of the 2013 McLaren MP4-28 Formula One car made from Johnnie Walker whisky tumblers. It took 1750 glasses to create the final form and Appleford painstakingly placed each glass at the optimum angle to create the flowing, aerodynamic lines of the racing car. The complexity created by the glasses and the reflections resulted in over 200 days of render time.

In the film the car dramatically shatters, serving as a powerful reminder of the consequences when a bad judgment call is made. The Houdini smash simulation took over a week to generate and created a data file of over 100 gigabytes.

Grant Hunter, Regional Creative Director, APAC iris Worldwide said: “The Glass Car has literally been a labour of love, when we first presented the idea we knew it had the potential to deliver the never drink and drive message in a surprising but beautiful way. We’ve been working with Johnnie Walker on their global sponsorship of the Vodafone McLaren Mercedes Formula One team for the last 6 years and the Join The Pact initiative has been an integral part of it. We hope the glass car will jolt people into making the right choice to never drink and drive”.