The Anatomy of Performance

Director: MARKUS WETTERBERG
Producer: RICHARD TSALIKIS

How do you measure the thrill of driving?

Performance is traditionally measured in numbers. Speed, horsepower, acceleration and lap times tell us what a car can do. But what about the feeling behind the wheel? The excitement, the focus, the physical response? Those are harder to measure.

For Polestar, Stygn took responsibility for the production of The Anatomy of Performance, a four-part series exploring the relationship between driving performance and the human experience, in collaboration with researchers from the Oxford SDG Impact Lab at the University of Oxford.

Filmed across four locations, from the track at Gotland Ring to Portimao in Portugal, Andorra and Oxford, the series follows the exploration of driving pleasure through cinematic storytelling, real-world driving and scientific research. The study brings together vehicle data, brain activity, physiological responses and drivers’ own accounts to investigate whether the thrill of driving can be quantified.

Stygn handled the production across all four episodes, along with additional versions and format adaptations for different platforms. From high performance driving environments to the research 
setting in Oxford, the project called for a production approach that could connect the thrill of driving with 
the science behind it.