Playing in the Dark
A branded campaign exploring the breaking point of ultramarathon runners, in both body and mind.
The Ask
What We Did
- Producing
- Casting
- Locations
- Production
- Editorial
- Color
- Sound Design
- VFX
- Finishing
This project was born from director Bailen Estrada’’s own experience as a runner. The idea was to explore what happens when the body starts to fail, but the mind keeps going. Instead of telling that story with talking heads or straightforward visuals, we set out to build a world that felt as relentless and surreal as the experience itself. The piece needed to blur the line between endurance and hallucination to show not just the grind of ultramarathon running, but the distorted reality that comes when exhaustion takes over.
Industries
Sports Fitness
- Branded Content
- Commercial
- Experimental
Approach
We designed a visual language that swung between reality and something a bit stranger. In studio, lighting carved the runners out of an infinite black void, creating a claustrophobic and visceral atmosphere. A robot arm captured them with precision, setting up seamless transitions that bent space and time.
On location, we carried the same look into the real world. Runners were lit only by a drone-mounted spotlight cutting through the night. The effect was haunting, as if the athletes were being chased by their own exhaustion. In post, AI-driven transitions broke the walls of reality, pushing the piece into the surreal. These choices let us show the runner’s internal state: fragmented, distorted, but determined to keep going.
Stills
9 / 9
How it happened
LIGHTING DESIGN
We lit the studio like an infinite black box. The darkness pressed in, isolating every step, every breath, every drop of sweat. It created a visual metaphor for the mental tunnel runners enter when fatigue takes hold.
ROBOT PRECISION
Using a robot arm gave us the ability to move the camera with unnatural smoothness. That precision created transitions that felt impossible, pushing the piece into a dreamlike state.
THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Outdoor shots leaned into the same claustrophobic feel. A single spotlight mounted on a drone cut through the dark, tracking our runners as if the night itself was closing in.
- 250k+ unique views on launch week
