Honda × Max Verstappen HR-V Storyboards — Seb Antoniou

Storyboards by Seb Antoniou for the 2023 Honda HR-V × Max Verstappen film, produced in London with location work in Milton Keynes.

The brief

Honda needed a 2023 spot for the HR-V hybrid that used Max Verstappen — two-time F1 world champion and Honda-powered Red Bull driver — without trying to pretend the HR-V was a race car. The film puts Verstappen behind the wheel of the road-going SUV near the Red Bull Racing HQ in Milton Keynes, doing the school-run version of his day job. The director’s call was deadpan: keep the car ordinary, keep the driver elite, let the gap between them carry the film. Seb’s boards had to land Verstappen as a recognisable face in every cut, because the brand value was in the audience reading him as Verstappen, not as a generic driver.

The storytelling decision

Verstappen is not playing a character. He is the joke — a two-time world champion driving a road SUV around Milton Keynes at the speed limit, past his actual office. The boards had to keep his face readable in every frame because the brand was renting his recognition, not his hands.

A celebrity-led car film usually leans on the celebrity doing the thing they are famous for. This one deliberately did not. The boards kept Verstappen visible through the windscreen, in the wing mirror, in the rear-view, in interior close-ups — even through cuts where the natural framing would have been a beauty shot of the car alone. The HR-V gets its hero frames; Verstappen never leaves them.

Credits

• Brand: Honda (Honda Motor Europe)
• Vehicle: Honda HR-V (e:HEV hybrid)
• Talent: Max Verstappen
• Year: 2023
• Format: Hero TVC plus social cutdowns (length to confirm; published as a single-take-feeling driver film)
• Region: UK / European
• Seb’s role: Storyboard artist, full sequence

Process notes

• Deliverables:
  • Black-and-white storyboard frames (PSD + JPEG) covering exterior tracking, interior driver framing, and the Red Bull HQ drive-past
  • Reference framing for the in-car camera rig so Verstappen stayed in frame across takes
  • One round of amends included per Seb’s standard rates

Board frames

Selected frames from the boarded sequence:

• frame-01.jpg — establishing wide, Honda HR-V on Milton Keynes road
• frame-02.jpg — interior, driver-side, Verstappen at the wheel
• frame-03.jpg — over-the-shoulder, dashboard and road ahead
• frame-04.jpg — low-angle tracking shot, HR-V exterior profile
• frame-05.jpg — Verstappen reaction beat, indicator click
• frame-06.jpg — drive-past Red Bull Racing HQ
• frame-07.jpg — interior close-up, hands at ten and two
• frame-08.jpg — final beauty frame, HR-V parked, Verstappen mid-stride