CapMetro's new Rapid routes run every 15 minutes and move you across Austin fast, and the spot needed to feel like that. The job came through Sherry Matthews, an Austin agency that does a lot of government and nonprofit work, with creatives Rich Terry and Gretchen Hicks. This was our third project together. CamLock Films handled production and post as the Austin video production company on the job, and the brief was to follow one rider from a bus stop to three destinations, downtown for work, a stadium for a football game, and a music venue for a concert, with a beginning and an end. All of it in one production day.

That is a lot of story for one day, and most of the locations had to be cheated. So we built the whole spot as a full animatic in Unreal Engine, cut to timing, using real map data so the geography matched Austin and a 3D scan of the office so the interior matched the room. When you are faking a downtown office and a football game inside a single day, knowing exactly where every frame lands before you show up is the difference between making the day and not. The creative directors used the animatic to lock pacing. Then we ran frames from the same 3D scene through AI to turn them into flat, traditional storyboards for the pre-pro book. Clients tend to prefer boards, and it strips out the uncanny look of a 3D render. On set the crew worked from the animatic and the client followed along on the boards.

The football game was a set of pulled bleachers next to UT's stadium, a crowd of extras, and a frame that didn't show much else. The concert was shot outside at night. One shot required green screen: our rider poofs into existence at her destination, so we shot plates on the bus and in her office, shot her on green, and Black Market Media comped her back in reacting like she had just teleported. Ryan Girard edited and Black Market Media colored. The track is "Stay Out" by Walkabouts, formally licensed, and it happens to be the band Ryan plays in. We'll take the coincidence.

Deliverables were a hero spot with cutdowns for broadcast and social, plus a short version built around each destination. [confirm final runtimes and count] For agency producers weighing a production partner in Austin, this is the kind of job where previz stops being a nice-to-have. Sherry Matthews has brought us three of these now, and the Unreal Engine pipeline is a big part of why the days keep working.

Title tag: CapMetro Rapid Commercial | Unreal Engine Previz | CamLock Films
Meta description: How CamLock Films shot three destinations in one day for CapMetro Rapid with Sherry Matthews, using a full Unreal Engine animatic and AI storyboards to cheat every location.