For taut drama, thrilling adventure, and sheer visual goodness, Hollywood has nothing on Birmingham and Venice. We pulled out all the stops with the Speedshape Digital reel, peppering it with thrilling car chases, high-flying jets, killer stunt driving, sultry women, and smoky burnouts–all painstakingly paired with some of the sharpest, cleanest, and most downright thrilling interactive and CG ever created.

When you’re done with your upcoming seizure, let’s talk.

Careful what you wish for.

Around 5:00 pm, there was a flurry of email and IM activity at local agencies and production facilities. “Are you going to the Speedshape cocktail party?”, “Yeah, I’m going, are you?” And next thing we knew we were toasting with nearly 500 of our friends and colleagues – though we were only expecting about 250. I guess the pile of coins we tossed in fountains all those years finally paid off. Those who attended won’t soon forget the name Speedshape, and neither will the three exhausted valets.

Here are ninety photos of party people. There are a couple hundred more on the Speedshape Facebook Page. While you’re visiting, why not “Like” Speedshape? We’ll like you right back.

It’s not how much killer work made it on our reel. It’s how much awesome stuff we had to cut out.

When you’re forced to leave some of the most impressive CG work ever done on the cutting room floor, you know you’re doing things right. What did make it in was the absolute best of Speedshape: car chases, cult star Norman Reedus, high-flying jets, killer stunt driving, sultry women, and smoky burnouts–all painstakingly paired with some of the sharpest, cleanest, and most downright thrilling CG ever created.

If you come away impressed, keep this in mind: some of this won’t even make our next reel.

We’ve delivered a number of successful Mustang projects over the past few years, but our latest effort for Ford has been one of most satisfying. Team Detroit wanted to create two distinct web promos for the revolutionary new engines Ford had created for the new V6 and GT 5.0 Mustang, but they wanted them to be as visually exciting as they were technically interesting.

So working from CAD data, we created a pair of riveting demos to show all the engineering features of the new powertrains, which were then interspersed with CG-driven driving footage, 360-degree burnouts, and traditional film footage. In addition, Team Detroit asked us to help direct the new exterior performance driving scenes and internal engine/oil scenes.

When it comes to engine demos, Speedshape is one serious performance machine.

Do you ever wonder, in the intense heat of the moment, if you could keep it together and make the right choice under pressure? Skinny, Skunk/Stink Digital, and Speedshape did exactly that with every aspect of the Lexus CT200h “Dark Ride” cinematic interactive commercial, and as a result, movie and web audiences are going to be joining actor Norman Reedus for a serious thrill ride.

Speedshape certainly made the right choice in joining forces with the ideal digital partners. It all started with Speedshape London winning the project, and then all of our offices jumped right in and started grinding.

Since there were no Lexus CT200h vehicles available for the shoot, CD Jonas Hallberg of the meteoric agency Skinny NYC asked us to replace the stand-in Toyota Matrix with a digital CT200h. Then, he paired us with director James Brown, Producer Ari McGarry and the rest of the highly-capable Skunk/Stink Digital production team to really make it shine.

Right out of the gate, we knew we had to make custom low light nighttime markers to create better tracking with the beautiful low-light photography by Claudio Miranda. Once captured, we used the 3D model provided by Lexus to seamlessly and transparently build the CT200h over the proxy Matrix. Then, to create the interactive user POV experience, we worked with Skunk/Stink to find the ideal lens and field of view to film the experience to perfection.

The project isn’t over yet, but there’s one thing we already know for sure: working with this crew turned out to be one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and we can’t wait for you to be the navigator on 05-13-2010.

View the “Dark Ride” trailer in HD on YouTube