Butterfly × Jun Mizutani — High-Speed Table Tennis Film, Tokyo
Jun Mizutani won Japan's first Olympic table tennis gold, in the mixed doubles at Tokyo 2020, and has four Olympic medals in all. For Butterfly, the Japanese table tennis brand he plays with, Tokyo branding agency RISKYBRAND asked us to film him in extreme slow motion. The answer was a Phantom high-speed camera mounted on a Bolt motion-control robot, and sports brand film production in Tokyo at the very edge of what the camera can do.
The idea
We wanted to slow the art of table tennis right down: every flick of the wrist, every bead of sweat, every spin on the ball. The concept came out of a collaboration with RISKYBRAND's creative team. We put the idea forward and did all the creative planning and storyboarding, with their feedback along the way.
How we produced it
We filmed at Studio Dollup in Nakano, Tokyo. The crew set up and tested everything the afternoon before, so the shoot day belonged to the athlete. We shot at the Phantom's highest frame rate at full HD. High-speed filming swallows light, so we lit with very powerful tungsten units. It was a hot, expensive amount of light, and exactly what the frame rate demanded. We wanted to see drops of sweat fly off him. Under those lights he was sweating anyway, and our make-up artist topped it up when needed.
We had Mizutani for about five hours, so every setup had to be ready before he stepped up to the table.
What we delivered
We delivered the commercial with an original music track, composed specially to meet the client's very specific brief. It ran on Butterfly's website and social media and on TV in Japan, and it screened at the World Table Tennis Championships and other competitions Butterfly sponsors. A director's cut of the film sits on our homepage.
More work with RISKYBRAND: NTT DATA Luweave and Retail AI. See our film and video production in Tokyo.
Client: Butterfly (Tamasu Co., Ltd.)
Agency: RISKYBRAND
Featuring: Jun Mizutani, Olympic table tennis champion
Location: Studio Dollup, Nakano, Tokyo, Japan
Services: Concept, storyboard, production, high-speed filming, motion control, lighting, original music
Crew: Director/DOP Andrew Goldie, specialist high-speed and motion-control crew, make-up artist, producer
Kit: Phantom high-speed camera, Bolt motion-control rig, tungsten lighting
Deliverables: Commercial with original score
