This is well worth watching. Be sure to read this text first, though.
And you thought those people that set up roomfuls of Dominoes to knock over were amazing. There are no computer graphics or digital tricks in the video that you'll watch. Everything you see really happened in real time exactly as you see it.
The film took 606 takes. On the first 605 takes, something (usually very minor) didn't work. They would then have to set the whole thing up again. The crew spent weeks shooting night and day. By the time it was over, they were ready to change professions.
The film cost six million dollars and took three months to complete, including full engineering of the sequence. In addition, it's a whopping two minutes in length, making each television airing quite expensive. However, it is fast becoming the most downloaded advertisement in internet history. Honda executives figure the ad will soon pay for itself simply in "free viewing's" -- it doesn't cost Honda a dime to have you watch this commercial.
When the ad was first pitched to senior executives, they signed off on it immediately without any hesitation -- including the budget. All the components that you see in the film (aside from the walls, floor, ramp, and fully assembled Honda Accord) are parts from real Honda cars.
The voiceover, by the way, is Garrison Keillor. When the finished ad was shown to Honda executives, they liked it and commented on how far computer graphics had advanced. They fell off their chairs when they found out it was for real.
Oh, and about those funky windshield wipers. On the new Accords, the windshield wipers have water sensors and are designed to start doing their thing automatically as soon as they become wet.
Watch the Flash commercial
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