Pepsi Bluescreen

April 9, 2021 12:36 PM

You would think that nowadays, this charming Japanese ad for bottled water would make extensive use of CG effects, but you would be wrong (via @cabel)
posted by gwint (29 comments total)

There's definitely some digital work going on there. When did they cut to her wearing the wire? There's a moment where the camera pans away from her, but then she still has to go out through a courtyard before she gets to the stage.

Pretty good stuff.
posted by nushustu at 12:55 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Pocari Sweat isn't bottled water it's a sports drink. Actually it's the best sports drink. I don't know what a Pocari is or why its sweat tastes so good but I drank enough of the stuff that I wouldn't be surprised if my sweat was mostly Pocari Sweat at the time.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:00 PM on April 9, 2021 [24 favorites]

There's definitely some digital work going on there.

"Practical effects" vs CGI is the better to way to say it. "No digital work" is something that pretty much doesn't exist anymore.
posted by sideshow at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

Now they need to publish the making-of the making-of, so we can see the second gimbaled camera chasing the first gimbaled camera through the rollicking jacaranda-lined road.
posted by chavenet at 1:08 PM on April 9, 2021 [17 favorites]

Love behind-the-scenes stuff like this, and as a photographer, love to see a reminder of how the crew sometimes has to do as much as the actors, but backwards and while carrying many, many pounds of cumbersome equipment.

There's a subreddit that, sadly, isn't active any more, which focused on the incredible feats undertaken by camera operators: /r/datshot. The post history there is worth spending some time with if you like that sort of thing.

And here's a recent behind-the-scenes video showing actors and crewing going through some interesting acrobatics to make a long scene happen on Chicago PD.
posted by msbrauer at 1:14 PM on April 9, 2021 [9 favorites]

This is wonderful. I would love to know whether the idea came first to do it this way, and then they found a director to make it come alive, or whether it started as an idea of running through a flowery moving animated world, and the director said "what if...?"
posted by Mchelly at 1:43 PM on April 9, 2021

And even though it looked like a long hard shoot, they all looked like they were having a great time.
posted by sammyo at 1:43 PM on April 9, 2021 [1 favorite]

Although it has little in common with this beyond Japan and a heartwarming belief in the power of the incredible team effort that filmmaking takes, One Cut Of The Dead is very much worth a watch.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 2:39 PM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

It's a lovely commercial. The BTS was interesting - amazing how much effort goes into a such a brief video/commercial. Those FX were cool. Thanks!
posted by davidmsc at 2:58 PM on April 9, 2021

Pocari Sweat is the major sports drink in Japan. Think Gatorade but not as sweet. The commercials are always big productions, and almost always feature high school kids. Lots of dancing and choreography. It's a big deal for a young actor to be featured in a Pocari Sweat commercial; this lead is the latest "It Girl."
posted by zardoz at 4:27 PM on April 9, 2021 [10 favorites]

Although it has little in common with this beyond Japan and a heartwarming belief in the power of the incredible team effort that filmmaking takes, One Cut Of The Dead is very much worth a watch.

If you're wanting to watch this excellent movie, do yourself a favor and go in knowing as little as possible about it. Don't look up anything about it beforehand, maybe not even reviews.
posted by star gentle uterus at 5:19 PM on April 9, 2021 [4 favorites]

So, to summarize:

More intensity!
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 6:35 PM on April 9, 2021

[*intensity intensifies*]

That's a fun commercial. I guessed some of what was digital but was very wrong about some of it, too. (The blossoms blowing in the wind were more practical than I expected, for instance.)
posted by rmd1023 at 7:21 PM on April 9, 2021

I couldn't get over the fact that they had wristguards for the actress to wear to protect her during rehearsals
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:01 PM on April 9, 2021

Robby became addicted to a popular Japanese soft drink called Pocari Sweat. Really, that's the name. My guess is it was the winner of a national contest for Best Soft-Drink Name Involving a Bodily Fluid, narrowly edging out Pocari Postnasal Drip and Pocari Festering-Wound Discharge.

Dave Barry Does Japan, 1992

I read this book in elementary school, and I've been living in Japan for 15+ years now, but tidbits like this one still pop into my head occasionally.

(Come to think of it, AFAIK "sweat" means "sweatshirt" in Japanese, so the bodily-fluid association might not be obvious to a monolingual Japanese speaker...)
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 8:07 PM on April 9, 2021 [2 favorites]

(Don't forget Calpis which my friends in Japan have always made a point of pronouncing as 'cow piss')
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 8:46 PM on April 9, 2021 [3 favorites]

Pocari Sweat saved me from many a hangover in Tokyo.
posted by gucci mane at 8:50 PM on April 9, 2021

yes, everyone go watch One Cut of the Dead, because it is so very very good

so apparently the name "Pocari Sweat" comes from the "pocari" being a coinage that sounded kind of refreshing-ish, based on things like onomatopoeia intuition, and the "sweat" came from the fact that it restored the electrolytes lost through sweating, if memory serves? Either way it's one of those things where everyone makes the same Extremely Clever Joke well after everyone else has just sort of gotten used to that being the name of the thing
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:30 PM on April 9, 2021

no you're at the stage of your hormone cycle where you're tearing up at a Pocari Sweat commercial
posted by taquito sunrise at 11:26 PM on April 9, 2021 [8 favorites]

I didn't tear up over the commercial. The making of however...

I'm also just really impressed by the athleticism of the actress, given that she's basically having to run an obstacle course.
posted by happyroach at 12:14 AM on April 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ignorant me honest to god thought Pocari Sweat was just one of those weird cyberpunk details William Gibson invented; I’m having a little trouble adjusting to the fact that apparently it’s both real and well known. Next you’ll be telling me Ono Sendai is a thing.

Neat commercial though!
posted by ook at 7:37 AM on April 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

Not to long ago, I was at our local Asian grocery store and found Pocari Sweat. I immediately bought a can and was transported back to my days in S. Korea. It's so much better than Gatorade/Powerade/highly colored over sweet electrolyte drink.
posted by kathrynm at 8:28 AM on April 10, 2021

Pocari Sweat IS everywhere in Japan, and was even when they began marketing the drink in the 80's. To a Westerner, it doesn't sound appealing, but it doesn't bother Asians or Middle Easterners, apparently. It is accurate: the minerals Pocari Sweat contains (sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium) are the same ones that are found in sweat, in roughly the same proportions. I never knew what it was until today, so I never tasted it. It's on my Japanese store shopping list now.
posted by kozad at 8:38 AM on April 10, 2021

I can't find a clip and didn't see it myself but my brother told me Letterman had a Pocari taste on his show and reflexively spewed it all over his desk.
posted by Rash at 9:45 AM on April 10, 2021

I relied on it when working in the steam heat of SE Asia but even fresh from the refrigerator case at 7-11, it wasn’t quite cold enough to suppress the mental image of drinking tepid sweat. The first sip had to overcome the gag reflex.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 10:23 AM on April 10, 2021

apparently it’s both real and well known

Not just well-known, ubiquitous. Unremarkable. I don't even live in that part of the world full time, but when I'm there I forget that's a thing and when new people notice it I'm like, oh yeah, that. It's just what it's called, shrug.

Tastes a little grapefruit-y to me, but not strongly so.
posted by ctmf at 11:53 AM on April 10, 2021

The making-of made me nervous with its mix of masked and unmasked people.
I assume some or all were in pods, but a year+ of living in the pandemic hypersensitizes me to this.
posted by doctornemo at 12:31 PM on April 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

yeah uh Japan has generally been less than fully and properly responsible masks-wise overall, and while infection numbers have been rather high by pacific rim standards, Japan has been kind of a useful data point to compare to white people countries in terms of “what if most people wore masks most of the time, and nothing else at all done right”

it’s honestly not great to be reminded routinely that Japan is still broadly in the “acrylic Final Jeopardy barriers will keep people safe at restaurants” stage of understanding the spread of the coronavirus

I haven’t watched the making-of but it’s also possible some people were wearing those weird clear plastic mouth covers that are completely open on the top and bottom, on the basis that they are more comfortable than masks (which themselves work on the basis of “if it’s comfortable, it’s probably not working”). My understanding is that those mouth covers are basically useless unless you have a can of spray paint and want a head start on building your Guts Man costume
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:37 PM on April 10, 2021 [1 favorite]

it wasn’t quite cold enough to suppress the mental image of drinking tepid sweat

I didn't really understand the point of sports drinks until a high school biology teacher basically told the class that we should drink them when we're physically exerting ourselves because it was fake sweat to replace the real sweat that's coming out of our bodies. From that point it just became flavoured fake sweat and I was fine with it, before I was like "why is this a bit salty, who likes this stuff?" Maybe I'd feel different if they were collecting it from actual Pocaris and bottling that, but I've got no problem with drinking milk so maybe not.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:51 PM on April 12, 2021