Tunnel Vision

In a commercial for Lockheed Martin from DDB Needham in New York, an F-16 fighter jet flies through a toll booth and into a tunnel--bypassing bumper-to-bumper traffic--to demonstrate Lockheed’s automated toll-collection system, now being used in New York. Here is how Los Angeles-based Perfx used visual effects to create the spot.

1. The production company, Los Angeles-based Omaha Productions, shot footage of cars, trucks and buses lined up in front of a full-scale model of a toll booth. The shoot took place at Sepulveda Dam in the San Fernando Valley.

2. To create the tunnels, Perfx built a scale model based on the design of the 2nd Street tunnel in downtown Los Angeles. The model was one-eighth actual size. Perfx then photographed the model and fed the image into a computer.

3. Working on a computer, Perfx created a realistic view of the tunnel by bringing together images of the tunnel model, the pavement by the dam’s spillway and the New York skyline.

4. Next, rows of traffic shot at the dam were digitally placed in front of the tunnel. Footage of an F-16 model, shot over 11 days against a green screen, was digitally inserted into the scene. The model is about one-eighth the size of a real F-16.

Could the 2nd Street tunnel accommodate an actual F-16 fighter? Mark Kolpack of Perfx said it could. “But we’d never get permission to do that.”