Through a combination of stop-motion film and sweeping camera moves, we take a haunting journey through a massive city built entirely of sugar cubes. The light glints off the crystalline structures—trees, archways, overpasses, warehouses, skyscrapers, a train depot, even a stadium. An announcer tells us that the sugar city we’re seeing represents the exact amount of sugar a person would consume by drinking just one soda a day over their lifetime. 221,314 sugar cubes in total. The camera then cranes to an overhead shot to reveal that the city is in the shape of a human body. The commercial ends by suggesting that rather than drinking soda, we drink water instead.

We were going to show the amount of sugar the average person, drinking just one soda a day, consumes in their lifetime—the equivalent of 221,314 cubes of sugar. In doing so, it was important to be both real and exact. So we created the design for the city using CADD software to ensure the math was precise. But it was critical to capture the reality and scale of the installation. So once the city was designed, we hired sugar sculptors, who spent three weeks building the city by hand out of sugar cubes. Once constructed, the city was 35 feet long. We then used a mix of motion control camera rigs, medical cameras, and time-lapse photography to give viewers an up-close tour through our sugar city.