Lights On

The brief

A 30 second launch commercial for the new S-Class, made on spec to show a car dealer what their lot could be running. Nobody commissioned it. Spec concept. Not affiliated with Mercedes-Benz.

The idea is called Lights On. The car starts in total darkness and wakes up one light at a time: the star, the grille, the tails. The film had to work as a vertical story on a phone, with the sound off.

What we made

• Lights On, a 30 second vertical film at 1080 x 1920 and 24 frames a second
• Eight shots, each planned in a 3D blockout before any final frame was made
• A voiceover and a music bed, with captions for every spoken line
• An end card with a blank where the dealer's name goes, so any store can run it

How it works

Every camera move was blocked out first with a plain grey stand-in car on a simple set. Each shot got its lens, height, move and length, so the blockout worked as the animatic for the whole spot.

Each shot was tested small, then made at full size. The lettering follows the brand's own type system. The award line, MotorTrend's 2027 Car of the Year, carries its source on screen.

The wide frame sits in the middle of the vertical screen and fades into black at the top and bottom. Cropping it to fill a phone would have cut the car off in the side and road shots. Because almost every shot is already black, the fade reads as part of the look.

What we threw away

The first end card named one store. The version shown here leaves the name blank, so the same film works for any dealer.

Licence plates and placards in four shots were cleaned to plain black plates, so nothing on screen reads as a real car on a real lot.