Getting Started With Unleash The Beast Inside The Iconic Model In Lexus Notorious Commercial
Most people who come looking for this already know the clip. It aired around 2012, featured the Lexus LFA, and had that distinctive voiceover about unleashing the beast. The commercial became pretty famous in automotive marketing circles. I am going to assume you want to understand what it actually was, find it again, or use it as a reference for something you are working on. The Lexus LFA is the car at the center of it all. It was a limited-run supercar with a naturally aspirated V10 engine built by Yamaha. The engine revs to 9,000 RPM. That part of the spec sheet is genuinely notable because most production cars top out around 7,500 RPM. Lexus spent about ten years developing this thing, and the commercial was meant to communicate that level of obsessiveness in engineering. The voiceover is by Paul Bettany. It was directed by McG. The whole campaign was produced by Dentsu. You can find the full commercial on the Lexus YouTube channel or on car culture sites like Top Gear's page. If you are looking for the raw video file itself for editing purposes, you will hit copyright walls pretty quickly. That is just how it works with studio material.
I worked on a project a few years back where we needed to analyze the pacing of that commercial for a client presentation on automotive advertising rhythms. The problem was that every platform I checked had either compressed the audio or trimmed the ending. The version on the official Lexus channel cuts the final "Beast is loose" tag slightly earlier than the broadcast version. If you are doing frame-by-frame analysis like I was, that half-second difference threw off my timing measurements. My workaround was simple. I found a recording of the original TV spot from a broadcast capture, cross-referenced it with the YouTube version, and used the broadcast version as my master timeline. It took about twenty minutes to sort out once I figured out which version was which.
What Actually Made This Commercial Stand Out
The common mistake people make when watching this commercial is focusing on the car. The real technical achievement here was the sound design. Lexus partnered with Yamaha to tune the intake noise of the LFA's V10 so that it would carry through the studio set and sound correct in post-production. That is not typical. Most manufacturers just slap a music bed over engine footage and call it done. The LFA's actual engine note was recorded and layered throughout the piece. Another detail that gets missed is the editing rhythm. The cuts are synchronized to the engine revs in a way that feels almost mechanical. It is not random B-roll spliced together. The director held onto each shot long enough for you to register the surface of the car before cutting to the next angle. This is a deliberate anti-fast-cut decision. A lot of automotive commercials from this era were going for that aggressive quick-cut style influenced by music videos. This one did the opposite. It let the car exist in frame for real time. The result is a slower, more deliberate viewing experience that matches the actual feel of driving something that heavy and expensive. There is a downside to all of this that people rarely mention. The LFA itself was not a commercial success. Only 500 units were made. The car was priced well above what most buyers in its segment would pay, and the technology inside was dated compared to rivals like the McLaren MP4-12C. The commercial sells a feeling, not a product you can realistically buy. If someone watches this and thinks they can walk into a dealership and order one, they are going to be disappointed. These cars now trade for well over a million dollars on the secondary market.
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Where To Find Reference Material
The official Lexus YouTube channel has the spot under their LFA playlist. It runs approximately ninety seconds. For higher resolution reference copies, automotive journalism archives like Motor Trend and Road & Track have discussed it extensively in their coverage. If you need the audio stems or session files, those do not exist publicly. Toyota/Lexus does not release those. For practical purposes, if you are studying this for your own work, I would recommend downloading the YouTube version and using something like Audacity to isolate the audio track. The separation between the voiceover and the engine sound is fairly clean. You can tell where the mix transitions from spoken word to pure engine noise. That transition point happens around the fifty-second mark of the video. There are also behind-the-scenes breakdowns on channels like The Slow Mo Guys and some of the automotive production vlogs that cover similar shoots. They do not always talk about this specific commercial, but the techniques described in those videos apply directly to how the Lexus spot was constructed. Lens choices, lighting ratios, the use of practical lighting on the car versus added fixtures. All of that is standard high-end automotive production work.
Common Problems When Working With This Footage
If you pull this video up in editing software, you might notice that the color grading shifts slightly between shots. That is not a mistake. The LFA was filmed in multiple sessions under different lighting conditions, and the colorist blended them together in post. If you are trying to match this footage to your own work or create a parody version, do not expect perfect color continuity across the whole piece. It is not there. Another issue is the aspect ratio. The original broadcast version was mixed for 16:9, but some archival copies circulate in anamorphic widescreen. If you are using this as a reference and the images look stretched, that is your problem. Switch to the YouTube version and verify the display settings in your editor. Set it to 1920x1080 and let it render straight. I should also note that if you are planning to use any portion of this commercial in your own project, the copyright situation is strict. Lexus and Dentsu enforce their rights. Even short clips get flagged on platforms with content ID systems. I have seen people get strikes over four-second snippets. If you need material for a project, the safest route is to shoot your own version. Use the same structure, the same pacing, the same sound design approach, but with your own footage. That is what most studios end up doing anyway when they want to avoid legal issues.
The LFA itself is worth noting as a benchmark. It holds the Nürburgring lap record for production cars from 2010 until newer cars came along. That fact is part of what makes the commercial believable. The car could actually do what it claimed. Some automotive commercials sell things the car cannot back up. This one did not have that problem. The LFA was legitimately exceptional, and the commercial reflected that reality rather than trying to invent one.
