How would you fit an entire cheesecake through a straw? Not easily. But that was what a commercial for SONIC’s new Strawberry Cheesecake Milk Shake called for and Spin Productions had to figure it out. With the mindpower of SPIN’s Keith Adams at SPIN, it happened

The shot, featuring the fast food company’s new milkshake, opens on a tight overhead view of a cheesecake. The camera moves and the viewer is suddenly pulled through a red “tube” only to emerge from the red signature straw found in all Sonic shakes. To the viewer it almost appears as though there’s an entire cheesecake in the bottom of the shake.

John Davis of Comotion Films used a 10mm snorkel lens on a motion control rig. Adams and crew then rigged a piece of PVC pipe to the lens imitating “movement” through a cylindrical space. Adams created the CG straw using Discreet’s Inferno. Final compositing was also done in Inferno. “I had to laugh to myself when everyone in the pre-pro meeting had straws up to their eyes, completely amazed at just how fascinating the inside of straw truly was,“ says Adams.