Our Generation Has Geniuses...But They Work For Honda

go here for a viewing:
multimedia.honda-eu.com...
(you have to click the cog, then the star that will eventually show up, then choose your resolution)

"This is one of the most amazing ads I've ever seen, truly a thing of beauty. Fully two minutes long, it's a Honda commercial called "Cog," the most elaborate Rube Goldberg device you've ever seen set to film, all made entirely of car parts. It required 606 film takes to get right. It's so perfectly filmed, you can't imagine it, you've just got to see it."


It really is insane, but what's crazier is that I've never seen it on TV or anywhere else. Why spend all that time on something that isn't even mass produced?

The ad will amaze you, its a Rube Goldberg to the max, seriously. But the sad thing is that the intelligence and precision that fueled this ad are doing just that...working in advertising a car company.

Advertising for another company.

Instead of doing something that could change the world.

Nonetheless, the ad will blow you away!

[Edited on 3-13-04 by Scat]

[Edited on 3-13-04 by Scat]

I don't understand the comment by the director

"This film will without doubt change people's perception of Accord."

Why? I don't think this film says anything about the Honda Accord. It's like a commercial that shows someone slice a brick of cheese, then show the Levi's Jeans logo.

It's a nice clip...but I wouldn't buy a car because of it.

I sat there in awe, I thought it was beautiful...using parts of an automobile to make something new and more artistic than anything I've seen from cars before.

Then the car rolled out, the banner dropped, and my smile turned upside down.

i work on honda motors, and i can honestly say they do have geniouses working for them in the engine design dept.
cant you just enjoy the neat commercial?

edit: I totally mistread Scat's post.

I don't see how the creators of the commercial would be better served doing something else. maybe they like advertising. just because you can orchestrate a big thing like that doesn't mean you're the next Steven Spielberg (and really, considering Spielberg's most recent works, that's a good thing)

[Edited on 3/13/2004 by MorningtonCrescent]

hahahahhahahh yeah steven has had his ups and downs.....

The purpose of posting this was just to say, "Wow, that's kick ash!"

It's just a downer how it was like isn't this cool? Buy our car!

That commercial is CGI (at least all the moving car parts are), you can tell by the way the light is refracting off of the objects. The car in the end is probably the real deal, but the rest of it, no way. Any claims they make about it being real are false - you can just tell, some things aren't exactly moving the way they should be. 90% of car commercials are total CGI or CGI mixed with real imagery, and apparently this car commercial is the latter. It is fun to watch though.

Well, that sucks.

It's still neat.

yep, we came acrose this sweeet video awhile agao and the video was much higher res were you could see the detale

It's computer-generated if know one knew this. How can the tires roll up the board? Other than it being computer-generated, it's still awesome to watch.

the tire thing kinda bugged me out too...i mean i could see one rolling abit if the impact was hard enough....but all 3?

and i dont understand how its supposed to change my opinion about an accord. i never had an opinion of accord!

The real geniuses working for Honda helped take the RX engine away from America and put it in the hands of Japan.

this is not cgi. it was proven beyond a doubt not only by the film-makers themselves, but by careful analysis on another forum quite some time ago. sorry, but its just too easy to underestimate people without any kind of backing. 'you can just tell'...



oh but officer... i could just -tell- he was a murderer... honest. i had to shoot him, i could just tell.

Shoot, I've worked with CGI - this IS CGI. I film-makers are full of #. The wheels (which were pointed out) just wouldn't behave that way in the real world, they weren't moving fast enough for the wheels to have behaved that way - even then, they wouldn't have moved so slowly if they wanted that effect, that wheel have to be moving pretty fast to be able to move another wheel of the same mass upwards on an incline like that, let alone do it to a third wheel.

Another sign of CGI, everything looks too perfect with CGI, even when its not supposed to look perfect - there are usually no flaws (natural flaws) in anything. I don't believe the film-makers claims, not for a second. I'm sure I can find the CGI company responsible for this work.

Maybe its real, maybe its not. As far as I'm concerned its not, even with all this information:

www.telegraph.co.uk.../news/2003/04/13/nhonda13.xml

Car companies will go to extremes to sell their cars and the possibility of them hoaxing all this (having the ad agency and the car company claim it to be real) to sell cars is very, very high. Things just look tooooo perfect. There is no other way to explain it. Everything moves toooo smoothly. That wheel explanation is a good explanation (in the link), it just isn't a good enough explanation for me. I know it would work, but again, back to my statements above.

I like the ad, just like everyone, but I'm still sticking (call me hardheaded) with the idea that is CGI.

[Edited on 3-14-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

There is a way it could be possible but with only really great editing. They didn't do it all in one shot. These events in the commercial were all done seperately. The tires part could have been done, but only in room which has a tilt to it and the camera still mounted in the same position. With that being said, I think it is very much so CGI. It's not that it is impossible. That commercial is very possible. But, it is highly unlikely that Honda would be able to have the time and patience to have shot after shot trying to seamlessly make this come to life.

I know the commercial is possible, but like you said, it takes too much time - but it was an ad agency who was paid to do it, and I'm sure they hired a CGI company to generate the ad with the direction of the agency. And I'll say it again, it just looks toooooo perfect. I keep on looking at it and the way the light is refracting off of everything just doens't look convincing enough. Too perfect, too perfect.

[Edited on 3-14-2004 by EmbryonicEssence]

Sweet! I can tell you this--the gears (cog) that start the beginning of the sequence are indeed real, or CG models of 'real' gears. I do know a bit about this--I'm a quality engineer for a Honda subsidiary! I see these things every day...lots of them...

We know they're all real in the real world, we're talking about them being rendered in a Computer Generated world.

Of course! I was just confirming that those are indeed genuine Honda issue, not just some generic 'cog' thrown in to the mix and passed off as same.