In 2018, Nitto will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its founding as a company. We have named the next 100 years the“Nitto-New Century” and as part of efforts to strengthen the company’s global brand, Nitto became the title sponsor of the Nitto ATP Finals, the season-ending finale of the men’s Pro Tennis Season, from 2017.
From this, the idea emerged to stage a tennis rally in the tournament’s host city of London, wherein the many uses of Nitto products would be featured in a wide variety of scenes from daily life.
The concept is “Behind Smiles”.
We wanted to show how the functions provided by Nitto’s products and technologies contribute to the smiles of ordinary people.
To express this idea, we challenged ourselves to create a witty presentation in which the scenes of the tennis rally unfold to lively music and the Nitto logo appears in multiple locations around the city.
Nitto provides approximately 13,500 varieties of product.
As such, the first hurdle was to decide which products were best suited to the story and the plan went through many stages of revision.
In addition, many of Nitto’s products and technologies are such that they go unseen during daily life, making it difficult to visualize them as part of the commercial’s format. It was for this reason that we decided to try using tennis, one of the world’s most recognized sports, as a collaborative device through which we could instill the Nitto brand in the viewer’s heart and memory.
The task was accomplished with the help of advertising agency Dentsu Y&R’s Japanese staff, who already possessed a deep understanding of Nitto’s business, and Y&R’s London Team, who helped ensure the filming of truly English townscapes, recruited local actors, and considered many elements that gave balance to the final product.
As part of Nitto’s efforts to strengthen the company’s global brand,for the Nitto-New Century, we decided to produce this new advertisement entirely on-location with international staff.
The global atmosphere is further encouraged by the host city itself, filmed with a loving eye by actual residents.
The scene at Big Ben was difficult because of the repair work being done on the tower. The bottom half of the building had to be revised with CG, which was quite a challenge.
For the Tower Bridge scene, the staff went up and down the Thames River multiple times until they could get a good shot.
Photography commenced in London in September.
While all of the images represent authentic scenes from the city, September is actually hurricane season in London and outdoor photography was likely to be a huge challenge.
Not to mention that London is notorious for its bad autumn weather.
The team got around this by pairing their footage with detailed CG composites, enabling them to reproduce the city’s outdoors in full detail.
CG specialists conducted frequent meetings with the team, in Japan and England, and work continued until every element was addressed.
The standout from among the cast of locals was also the oldest, a woman named Pamela.
Possessing true British sense of humor, she refused to answer anything that was asked of her in an ordinary fashion.
Upon first meeting, a staff member from Japan happened to ask her age.
She then turned to her interpreter, who was in her 20’s, and replied “not much older than you”.
Even when it came to her tennis swing, she returned shot after shot with sharp volleys, forcing the director to beg her to tone it down and ‘act her age’.
She was also an extremely smart dresser whose outfits were mostly pulled from her own wardrobe.
With her love of floral patterns and a touch of cynical wit, Pamela was truly lovely to work with.
Everyone is concentrating on the monitor seriously while shooting.
The “Shimon Colo Colo”, a touch panel cleaner for smartphones was popular with the local staff members. Nitto’s products amazed and inspired people, even in London.
Japan and Britain are two countries with rather different working environments when it comes to video production.
For example, monitors have different color temperature settings, meaning that footage brought straight from England will often have a peculiar tone when seen in Japan.
The crew prepared for this problem by carrying out extremely precise color design.
They also decided to emphasize the British sense of color, resulting in high contrast images that resemble feature films from outside Japan.
The detail of the CG compositing was also very complex and attention was paid to the smallest points, down to the individual strands of netting on each racket.
The finished product is thus a showcase of delicate, intensive craftsmanship.
Checking carefully the background of the green for CG synthesis. Each work for preparation are small but important for shooting.
Including the car scene, many scenes in the movie employ precise use of CG.
