A Reveal Story
Studio: Chapeau Studios
Role: Creative Director: led the team across 3D, animation, compositing, color, and edit
Executive Producer: Ben Looram
ECD: Lauren Mayer-Beug
Creative Director: Ryan DeCarlo
Producers: Therese Mayer, Collin Sweeney, Alex Kim, Robert Curreri, Armani Cobbs
Compositors: Mark Youngren, Ryan DeCarlo
Lead Flame Artist: Mark Youngren
Flame Artists: Shane Zinkhon, Chris Payne, Erik Borzi, Kevin McDonald, Randy McEntee
3D Leads: Mike Townshend, Blake Newton, Ryan DeCarlo
3D Artists: Adam Van Vleet, Garrett Knisley, Andrew Hoeveler.
Designers: Ryan DeCarlo, Adam Van Vleet
Colorist: Robert Curreri, Matthew Schwab
Associate Art Director: Sarahjane Pattwell
Editorial: The Den
Editors: Nate Cali, Joshua Butt
Managing Director: Vic Palumbo
Executive Director: Jennifer Mersis
Producer: Kelly Noecker
Background
Dodge built its whole identity on the gas V8, the noise, the menace, the swagger you could hear before you saw it. Then they announced they were killing it. The Charger Daytona SRT was the brand's first-ever EV, an electric muscle car from one of the last holdouts for the gas engine. The reveal had one job: to convince a fanbase of purists that the soul survived the switch.
Problem
Electric reads quiet. Clean. Polite. The opposite of everything Dodge stands on. This wasn't a new-model launch, it was the first time the world would see the brand go electric, and it had to prove that a Dodge could lose the engine without losing what made it a Dodge.
Spot 1: Guilty As Charged :60
Challenge
The design had to carry what the engine used to. The threat, the volume, the swagger now lived in the visuals, the cut, and the sound design, because the car didn't make them the old way anymore. One of the most anticipated EV reveals of the year, a hard deadline, a team of 8+ to direct across animation, 3D, motion, compositing, and color.
Then mid-production we lost the files off the server, a full day of work, gone, against a clock that didn't move.
We rebuilt, re-rendered, and still hit the reveal.
Spot 2: Performance Made Us :60
Spot 3: Trouble's Brewing :60
Approach
Guilty As Charged was the hard one, the full 3D build, the spot that had to carry the reveal. As creative director on it, I directed the look and led the 3D and design. The look was the whole problem to solve.
The instinct with an EV is to light it clean: futuristic, minimal, bright, showroom floor. I went the other way. I lit it like a muscle car rolling out of an old classic garage, crushed blacks, hard contrast, the car sitting in shadow and dust, threat instead of clean light. The powertrain was new. The attitude couldn't read new. The grade and the 3D environment are what kept the Dodge in it.
Holding that look meant re-lighting the environment and rendering again every time the focus of the reveal shifted, without letting the attitude drift between versions.
References
Animatic: Guilty As Charged
Color grade Tests
Results
Deliverables
The reveal premiered as part of Dodge's Speed Week, the first time the world saw the brand go electric. The stream drew 1.8M views and over 1,600 comments on Dodge's channel, and the response did what the launch was built to do: skeptics showed up bracing for a betrayal and left convinced the muscle survived the switch. Same menace, new powertrain. I directed the look that kept it.