Gene Kelly in Fantastic New Volkswagen Golf GTi ad

MPC bring Gene Kelly back to life to sing in the rain for Volkswagen Golf.

Jake and Ryoko at Stink have directed the fantastic new Volkswagen Golf GTi spot - 'Gene' for BMP DDB. The 60 second ad, with the strap line 'The new Golf GTI, The original, updated' was posted by the skilled team at MPC.

To illustrate the 'updated' theme, the directors re-created the iconic dance sequence from the 1952 film 'Singing in the Rain' and gave this a delightful contemporary twist. The commercial sees a digitally doctored Gene Kelly again skipping merrily through the drops, but this time he's break dancing...

MPC were involved in the project from the outset, VFX Supervisor Alex Lovejoy attended the shoot at Shepperton Studios where rough composites of the Gene Kelly shots were created. This was in order to double check that the camera moves in the action being shot and the digital version to be re-created matched. At the same time, clean plates of the background were shot, again roughly following the same camera moves to facilitate the removal of the dancer's heads.

Back at the facility, MPC had the tough job of bringing Gene Kelly back to life; the first step was to source an HD resolution version of 'Singing in the Rain'. Christophe Allender in Inferno, then edited the shots of Gene in the original sequence - a particularly complicated process as some sequences are 15 seconds long and in certain cases Gene's head had to be reversed, frame-cut and morphed together to match the dancer's moves. The head was then cut out and stablilised from the film before being tracked back onto the dancer's bodies.

Finishing touches were added to give atmosphere to the shots, these include the re-creation and movement of Gene's shirt collar and tie. Additional rain and specific water droplets were added to emulate the original film sequence.

The ad airs in the UK from January 27th 2005.