How do you get from here to there? If you’re a renegade, you do it with vida loca and probably some off-road wildness on the way. Jeep’s Renegade urban and off-road subcompact celebrates that wild, free, bad-ass spirit. To let the world know it, DDB Chicago tapped us to create a suite of four “Release your Renegade” commercials for the vehicle’s launch.

Since nothing says bad-ass better than the music of up-and-coming artists Halsey, Uri Grey, Molly Kate Kestner and Chloe Nixon, Jeep licensed their hits and handed off to us to run with the project.

That’s where the fun really began. Filming on a soundstage, our founder Erin Sarofsky analyzed and worked with each performer’s energy and aesthetic, watching and directing the way they moved, and danced–vital for shaping the tone and look of the four 30-second spots.

Because the spots would also star the vehicle, Erin studied reels of Renegade footage before the shoot. “With that footage in my head,” says Erin. “I was able to direct the performers into poses and movements that would make the silhouettes of their bodies a perfect canvas for the footage we had of the Renegade.”

Halsey stretches out an arm, and in the silhouette, a Renegade races to her fingertips. Uri Grey lifts hands to head, creating an arc for a Renegade to cruise from shoulder to neck. The result is seamlessly flowing, powerful and bold. Choreographed with the collages and music, we animated type to punctuate voice tracks of each artist speaking her renegade truth.

Putting it all together, we went with a photo-real, double-exposure treatment, pushing the technique to extremes. In each piece, artists’ bodies become a flowing canvas. Footage of the Jeep traveling on and off road, and the artists performing, converge and spill out of the body silhouettes, creating a surreality of new collaged canvases that bloom and evolve with the artists’ songs. 

Composites of each piece were done in Adobe After Effects—the ideal tool for design-centric work.

“Double-exposure is a popular technique for commercial work, but often gets pretty watered down,” sums Erin, “In addition to working with these amazing women artists, what made this campaign so exciting was that our agency partners encouraged us to push the look, giving our team the freedom to create these stunning double-exposure compositions.”