Learning to levitate. Look behind the scenes of the latest Air Wick commercial produced by Papaya Films London08.06.2020

A small, cute device plugged into a wall socket lifts objects in the room up with the fragrant plumes it produces—that’s the premise behind the latest commercial for Air Wick, developed by the London branch of Polish production house Papaya Films. See what the effort looked like behind the scenes.

Even the strongest scents don’t have the ability to lift things up into the air. So how can we make them levitate on screen? Well, that’s the magic of special effects and a handful of production tricks. All the objects in the room float thanks to wires holding them up which then the VFX team removed in post-production.

To achieve the final result seen in the ad, the Papaya Films team used over 300 meters of wire. But wait, there’s more—the entire mechanism used to create the impression of levitation had to be precisely engineered, while the planned VFX shots required the techs to take precise lighting measurements and take down the dimensions of every element that would be involved in the shot.

Why didn’t we shoot the commercial entirely on green screen? Well, the filmmakers the wanted to mimic the original reflections, lighting sources, and angles needed to successfully embed them in the scene. The only elements that were filmed separately and added in post-production were the sweets, the pillow, and the flower petals.

Below you will find a final version of the ad: