Toyota x VMAs 2021

As the sun went down over New York City Sunday September 12, Ed Sheeran cranked up the volume for his outdoor set at the 2021 VMAs. Under the stars in the shadow of a sweeping skyline, he debuted a no-frills rendition of his new song, “Shivers,” at Brooklyn Bridge Park.

To help drive viewership to the performance, Toyota commissioned a branded content piece to play in-show leading up to it.

The spot uses Sheeran’s hit song Bad Habits as the background. We open with our hero on the subway. As the train comes to an abrupt stop she takes a seat and is instantly transported into a brand new Toyota Corolla already filled with her friends. And as they make their journey to the Toyota stage, they see a lot of wild things along the way!

We helped elevate all the in-camera practical effects by layering VFX in just the right places. The spot went from production to air in just 2 weeks and was accompanied by over a dozen social cuts.

Behind The Scenes

In the hydrant scene, we wanted to make the water feel more explosive and powerful than what production was able to achieve practically. There was a lot of mediums used to create the final look.

The basketball scene is one of our favorites. The art department was able to make a basketball explode with a really cool powder effect. However, for safety reasons, they couldn’t get it bigger or powerful enough to fill the frame so we enhanced the explosion using simple layering and opacity modes of other powder explosions. Sometimes, the simplest approach is the best approach!