A polar bear in Tokyo
English subtitles are currently unavailable. I'll get them back in soon, hopefully.
In 2012, I was approached by a marketing consulting agency that was developing some sort of promotional campaign about environmental sustainability for a major electronics brand. They felt that just putting out information about how a company is trying to do stuff that's better for the environment would be kind of boring, so they wanted something more fun. They came to me through a connection because I'm a comedian, and they provided a small budget to experiment. The goal was simply to make amusing videos that had at least some connection to environmental issues.
Unfortunately, the project didn't go any further than the test pilot stage. The consultants we were dealing with seemed to like the video, but apparently their client, the big electronics company, decided to go a different way.
The dialogue was largely improvised under an outline that I developed, and I directed, filmed, and was the producer. The voice of Shiro Kuma Kun is Vinay Murthy, while inside the suit is Cyrus Sethna. Cyrus also did the video editing. The part of the regular Japanese guy is played by Ken Suzuki, basically just being himself. Filmed at Spring Day's place, and Spring also helped with filming. Cleve Lendon was also on hand to help with filming.