Creature Discomforts: Life in Lockdown
Born Free Foundation
Issue 56 | September 2020
Agency
ENGINE
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer Billy Faithfull Creative Directors Steve Hawthorne, Katy Hopkins Creatives Pete Ioulianou, Ollie Agius
Production Team
Agency Producer Laura Melville Agency Assistant Producer Henry Davies Production Company Aardman Animations Director Peter Peake Producer Sami Goddard
Other Credits
Account handling Owen Keating, Tom Butler Social Gemma Glover, Jack Cartwright PR Aisha Jefferson, Marie Larner and Olenka Lawrenson at ENGINE
Date
July 2020
Background
In 1989 Nick Park won an Oscar with ‘Creature Comforts’, a short film in which the words of non-actors were put into the mouths of plasticine animated animals.
Thirty-one years later, the same idea was put to use but for a more poignant purpose.
Idea
The insight behind the video was that in lockdown humans were experiencing what wild animals suffer in captivity. ‘Creature Discomforts’ used the dialogue of ordinary people talking about their lives during the pandemic, touching on their feelings of isolation and depression. “It’s like a social castration”, “It’s very lonely”, “It’s getting repetitive, every day being the same.” The endline read: For us, lockdown was temporary. For some animals, it’s for life.
Results
So far, the film has been seen over a million times across social platforms and shared by Greta Thunberg, Gary Lineker, Ricky Gervais and even Carole Baskin from Tiger King. It’s also been picked up and featured by BBC News, Manchester News and The Daily Star plus multiple trade publications.
Our Thoughts
As with the Nick Park original, it is the juxtaposition of sweet-looking animals with unscripted, un-theatrical voices of ordinary people that makes this so effective. It’s an empathy trap. First you feel for the people whose voices you hear. Then, when you make the connection, you understand how your own feelings of loneliness and anxiety must be a lot, lot worse for a caged animal. A very different spin on Covid-19, using it to get us to think about something completely different.