A look at innovations from the Golden State

A commercial for Lexus automobiles from Team One Advertising in El Segundo shows a Lexus GS heading into a storybook city after speeding past a burned-out Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Here is how Digital Domain of Venice created the effect.

* Step 1: The Lexus was filmed on a private dirt roadway on a ranch near Bakersfield. A crew watered down the road to control the amount of dust created by the car.

* Step 2: Artists at Digital Domain scanned photographs of skyscrapers into a computer and built digital models of tall buildings--blending them to create a sort of digital Emerald City. The city was then digitally “painted” and inserted into the live-action film.

Digital Domain producer Holly Port said it was important to choose film where the road dust did not rise above the car. That’s because the digital city could not be inserted behind dust clouds.