By Holly Stuart Hughes

The idea behind the new Range Rover Sport ads is simple: The car is good looking, and it's smart, too.  Its on-board computer scans  the road for bumps or puddles, and helps the driver adjust. "It's a clever car, in other words," explains photographer Andy Glass, who shot the new ads. The campaign was conceived by Y&R/London, and production was handled by Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe / Y&R. 

The illustrations of the computers circuitry had to be computer generated.  To make sure the illustration Glass and creative director Graham Lang worked with CGI artists at London's Smoke and Mirrors before the shoot, providing them the information they needed to make sure the illustration would have the right perspective:  Glass was given  a copy of the illustration to take with him to the shoot so that on location he could preview how it would look with the photos he was taking.
 
During the shoot, Glass and AD Tim Brookes previewed each shot roughly composited with the CGI images in place, and adjusted camera angles and distances as needed to make everything fit.  

"We wanted a photographer who was going to be capable of showing the car off in all its glory," Brookes says. "And that was our brief to Andy, make these look stunning and epic." Art buyer Liz Ismail of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe / Y&R says she and the creatives previewed several portfolios before choosing Glass for his lighting.  
The shoot took place on a road in the south of France where Glass had shot before. "Nicolas Billon at Continental Production in France was a grand asset on the shoot and worked tirelessly to make sure everything went according to plan," says Brookes. "The shoot went incredibly smoothly with the hardest part being the early starts and late finishes involved with shooting cars! But we were in the South of France, so it wasn’t all bad!"