Running up a Pocari Sweat

With the tagline, “turn a headwind into a tailwind,” But I Saw You is a wonderfully emotional ad for a Japanese sports drink.

Starring the up-and-coming actress, Nakajima Sena, the ad starts with the young girl walking down a school hallway. Everything seems normal...until she turns around. She pushes through the crowd, and around her, the hallway transforms. The floors become wavy, the walls twist and turn, and papers fly out of empty classrooms. She bursts through a wisteria-strewn lane onto a stage where she and a fellow classmate lock eyes and hands, swinging above the ground. 

Edited to be a single-take ad, the most fascinating part of this piece is that every single frame was captured in-camera. The production built an undulating set nearly 85 meters long. The hallway’s sides are strips of fabric, and even the trellis holding the flowers was made to move. All in all, the ad is an ode to film craft and technology, capturing a tumultuous, but happy, moment in a teenager’s life when things suddenly make sense and take a turn for the better.

A BTS film is below, showing some of the incredible mechanics involved in this ad for the Japanese sports drink, Pocari Sweat. But I Saw You was directed by Show Yanagisawa and helmed by creative agency Dentsu.