With Castrol we had a celebrity athlete who had about 4 hours of time on set. In these situations all set elements needed to be in one location. We shot this in the Milwaukee area so instead of a proper stage, we used a convention center that also had outdoor locations for a rally car shot.
Sourcing things such as the Car became a challenge as our closest source for a vehicle was in South Carolina. Once the car was sourced, we had a graphic overlay in Castrol branding just like their WRC cars printed and applied in nearby Chicago.
The F16 cockpit was a model that was sourced online, but we needed to add an extension for the additional seat. The extension was done in Rhino. The model was then exported to a useable file for a local CNC flatbed operator to cut out of plywood. Real F16 seats were sourced from a vendor in Las Vegas and shipped to our Milwaukee set shop to build out the cockpit.
The Nacelle and HUD for the F16 was a model again modified in Rhino to fit our purposes. 3D printing of those pieces were sourced out of the Chicagoland area. Printing was done via HP printers which makes much better prints than a standard Bambu Labs or Prusa printer as the pieces are formed in a powder that is sintered.
In addition to this, we built a frag set for the crows nest of the container ship working with the Post FX company who purchased a model of a cargo ship. I took the model, isolated the crows nest and did some modifications to make it more easy for a set shop to build with materials available locally. We rented some 20' containers as background so the VFX company didn't have to rotoscope the background which would have been difficult with our rain gag.
Finally our last set element was a 4 wall conference room. After inspecting the convention centers floor for the flattest and cleanest space to fit out set, we used the polished concrete floor as our actual floor as shot wise we never saw it, thus saving some funds in not having to subfloor and apply flooring to the set.
I would also like to say that I had an excellent crew in Milwaukee who did an amazing job in making this all come together. Sometimes when you work out of town it's a mixed bag of whom you get to work with. I was fortunate for the complete professionalism of this crew and set construction company.
Cockpit cut out on CNC flatbed ready to assemble
Making extensions to F16 cockpit
Test fit of 3D printed nacelle in cockpit
Finished cockpit on stage
Cockpit being lighted, ready to go
Cockpit on camera
Crows nest in Rhino
Crows nest under construction
Scenic work on crows nest
Ladder for crows nest
Crows Nest on Camera
Rally Car with applied graphics arriving on set
