I’m excited to finally share this Porsche x Star Wars commercial I creative directed for Trollbäck+Co in NYC. Disney tasked us to make a spot that would get people excited about the new Taycan and the new movie. It was all for a campaign celebrating the first official collaboration between Star Wars and Porsche, to unite the legacies of the two brands. They wanted us to show historic, visual, and ideological parallels – linking the two brands through seamless editing, CGI, and VFX. Our videos helped the campaign reach a combined 12 million views on YouTube, as well as over 20k landing page visits to a branded content hub at WIRED.

We had only a week to put this together with my editor Karl Amdal. We originally made it as a proof of concept edit, using clips we ripped from Youtube. The intention was that they would green light the project and I would spend weeks in the Porsche and ILM vaults digging up old blue prints & footage.

We sent the spec spot to The Porsche family and Disney CEO Bob Eiger. The word soon came down that everybody loved it SO much, we shouldn’t change a single frame (!). It was done! They would send us high res footage and all we had to do was up-rez. This was both thrilling and disappointing. I was ecstatic that they loved it, but bummed that the promise of spending weeks in Stuttgart and/or Gorge Lucas’ basement had vanished. Moral of the story: never do a spec video that is TOO good, or you may wow yourself right out of a job.

Before it wrapped, JJ Abrams did make a few last minute shot changes, as is his prerogative. My good friend and Trollbäck big cheese, Alex Moulton, ECD’d the final round, with Fran Roberts doing some immaculate CG subtleties for some polish. Overall, I’m thrilled with the final result. The spot ran across social media and was integrated into a WIRED page showcasing the collaboration between the two brands.

Check out the rest of the project here.