Motionographer® Audi R8 CG Commercial | Render Entertainment/James Bali

The final R8, a V10 Performance Quattro model, produced at Audi’s Böllinger Höfe plant in Germany, rolled off the production line in March 2024, marking the end of an era for Audi’s flagship supercar.

To pay tribute to the R8, James Bali decided to reproduce one of its most epic ads and a personal favorite of his, released back in 2013, where an R8 sits on a Dynamometer and is pushed to its limits, resulting in one minute of pure, raw v10 power.

Speed is particularly challenging to capture, even more so when the object in question is standing still in a close environment. Needless to say, it required almost every trick in the book: from dust, sparks, vibration, and condensation particles flying out of the exhaust pipes to physical camera shakes, procedural lens flares, and correct motion blur to make the Audi R8 look like it has exhausted all of its 562 horsepower on that Dynamometer. Couple all that with the soundtrack from the original ad… et voila!

And in the words of the great John Milius, “Pain is temporary, film is forever”, it was all worth it. The project turned out to be one of the most successful projects in Bali’s career, resulting in over 1 Million views on Instagram.