While Las Vegas was largely asleep ahead of a busy weekend of racing for the grand prix, Caesars Palace was wide awake as George Russell and Brad Pitt filmed an advert for a new Mercedes. In a new behind-the-scenes video by celebrated photographer Larry Chen, he detailed the “upside down” production of what became a viral video.
The shoot, which focused on a highly camouflaged prototype of the new AMG GT, took place between 7pm and 7am, allowing the production team to enjoy the quiet streets of Sin City.
Featuring both Russell and Pitt, the video saw the latter playing a guest waiting for his car to be picked up by a valet, Russell. The Briton returns the car, but not before several doughnuts and some impressive drifting.
According to Chen, Russell arrived on set late at night and dived into his character. “We started off with this really fun scene of him pretending to be a bored valet driver,” Chen explained. The shoot required precise direction, with Chen noting the expectations from a certain sponsor: “I was told I always had to show his IWC wristwatch… I always made him pull back his sleeve.”
Funnily enough, the majority of the driving wasn’t actually done by the Mercedes Formula 1 driver, with this responsibility instead being given to Formula Drift champion Samuel Hübinette. The conditions were far from perfect for him, with the fountain of Caesars Palace being surrounded by cobblestone and uneven surfaces.
“The way the vehicle moved, the way it built up smoke… was pretty different,” Chen added, describing the challenge of shooting a prototype covered in 3D-printed cladding.
Fresh from his work on the F1 movie, Pitt quickly fell into this role in a confident manner.
“I would say my favourite shot of the night was with Brad and then also the vehicle in the background making a bunch of tyre smoke,” Chen explained. “The Mercedes folks originally asked me to potentially get this shot while Nick and the crew were getting it on video, but I tried my best and Brad’s position wasn’t perfect for that in terms of the angle of the shot.
“I actually had to be a lot closer to him to shoot his face. We had to light him and then also the action had to take place kind of in slow motion for the shot to come together. It almost looked like a photoshopped shot. It looked like it was not real, but we did it practically and that’s just my style.
“I really want to try to get everything as close to in camera as possible. After that, I showed the folks from Mercedes the photo, and they were just so stoked on how interesting it looked. It just looked so out of place.”
Shooting wrapped after several hours of work, producing a video that was worth the sleepless night.
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