GEICO
We were approached by one of our partner agencies, AuxCo, with a problem. They had been collaborating with internet personality and songwriter Rudy Mancuso on a March Madness ad for GEICO. In the ad, Rudy sings a custom-written song about basketball and GEICO insurance. However, the client had concerns about one scene where Rudy drinks from a solo cup while sitting on the hood of a car, which implied drinking and driving—an issue for an insurance company commercial. Compounding the problem, Rudy was unavailable for reshoots, and March Madness had already started!
We had just two days to find a solution. The scene in question was a single 20-second shot where Rudy repeatedly smacks and lifts the cup to his mouth. Given these constraints, we decided the best approach was to perform a 3D motion track of the cup, create a 3D tumbler, and replace the solo cup with the 3D tumbler.
After creating the tumbler and tracking its motion, we used rotoscoping to mask Rudy’s hands so they appeared on top of the new cup. Additionally, we color-corrected the original solo cup to blue to ensure that any motion blur wouldn’t reveal the orange cup underneath the tumbler.
Finally, we applied motion blur to the elements and replaced the stack of cups in the background with a 2-liter bottle of soda. This transformation effectively changed the scene from a potentially problematic depiction of drinking to a G-rated picnic.
