This Super Bowl spot, directed by Academy Award-winner Chloé Zhao, shows a Clydesdale galloping through an open Western landscape before tripping on a barbed wire fence, suffering a leg injury. One of the biggest challenges was making the sequence of the Clydesdale falling down and injuring itself feel believable. In the final edit it looks like the Clydesdale falls hard to the ground after jumping over a broken fence, but in reality this was filmed as a series of carefully planned actions in which the horse was gently guided down to the ground in stages by a professional handler onto a soft bed of sand. Our VFX and CG teams created detailed dust effects and manipulated areas of the ground where the horse lands in order to intensify the effect of the fall and to make this sequence feel as dramatic as possible. In addition to compositing separate passes of fences around the animal, we also did sky replacements and created matte paintings for nearly every exterior shot.
Agency: Vayner, New York
Client: Budweiser
Director: Chloe Zhao
Production Company: Superprime
VFX Supervisor: Mario Stipinovich