‘Grooves’ saw the team completely immerse themselves in truck culture, creating a zany, exaggerated fantasy where anything is possible. Created entirely during the pandemic, the shoot took place in South Africa with both director and agency attending via video conference. 

The VFX components were then executed by Framestore’s artists working remotely across New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and London. Every pixel in the fantasy monster truck world, aside from the main character, was created in CG, making the project challenging from both a compositing and CG perspective.  

“The creative for the Cheez-It campaign was very funny and out there, so my job was to make the madness a reality,” said Framestore Pictures Director, Chris Waitt. “Directing the live action shoot remotely was a huge challenge, but also a lot of fun. Using VFX artists from across the US offices, Framestore did a great job creating the cheese monster truck. Now we just need to persuade Cheez-It to build an ACTUAL real life cheese monster truck!”

Throwing the camera around at impossible speeds and distances, Framestore built an outrageous CG monster truck and massive arena complete with epic jumps, then populated it with a few thousand versions of the same spectator. Houdini allowed for high frequency detail to be added procedurally to the large scenes and crowds.

The agency creatives and our director Chris Waitt were a blast to work with,” said Framestore Creative Director, Aron Hjartarson. “The creative team enthusiastically became immersed in monster trucks through deep research, constantly adding ideas for ways to enrich the world we were creating.” 

The tasty final color grade was executed by Framestore’s own Clark Griffiths.