HONDA HR-V “Stepping”
Multi award winning choreographer Supple Nam, teamed up with director Kim Gehrig and producer Lee Groombridge to create a witty, innovative pitch for the new Honda HR-V commercial.
Bouncing off the creatives treatment from the agency, Supple Nam with Kim Gehrig workshopped various choreographic ideas and concepts involving clothing, concept imagery, power of numbers and of coarse “The new Honda HR-V” car. These impressions making it visually unique and innovative.
With Supple’s fascination on precision walking (Shuudan Koudou) and Kim’s creative input, the pitch was accepted and the epic journey of their ambitious ideas began. Both Supple and Kim looked at various types of fascinations of similar vain as reference, to make this commercials appearance very punchy and edgy.
The next step was to cast the concept. Although, with the client’s high demand to get the perfect cast in looks, skills and talents, Supple Nam and his casting team had tedious audition process in front of them. Auditions were announced and applicants from all over the UK and Europe were filtered down to a shortlist of 400 to audition in a period of 2 days as well as private auditions during and outside the choreography workshop. Supple and his casting team broke it down to 10 core precision walkers to sketch his ideas and present them to Kim.
With the final cast of precision walkers selected rehearsals began. Supple trained the cast mentally and physically to later apply his choreographic ideas to bring the concept to life. Working side by side with Kim and her team, Supple presented his ideas on a daily basis with the aim of the choreography to look simple and visually strong for camera.
After an intense yet fun 5-6 weeks of developing and training Supple and Kim put the whole division together, ready for the one week shoot at Wembley Arena.
With an epic week of shooting under intense pressure, problems and doubt kept presenting themselves. However, Supple with his optimistic attitude kept his team and precision walkers spirits lifted.
An epic experience, to an epic idea to a now epic commercial.
With the commercials 1st week early cinema release, it has received a lot of hype and attention for its unique daring edge as a car commercial. On the first week of its TV release it was voted “Commercial of the Week” (AM mag).
-Honda Stepping Commercial recently entered the UK Top Shazamed Ads.
-Supple Nam has been nominated for Best Live action SFX at the British Arrow Crafts Award 2015.
-HONDA has since decided to extend its territories internationally for the commercial to be viewed.
Choreographer: Supple Nam
Director: Kim Gehrig
Production: Somesuch
Client: Honda
