Everything is spot on in this truly creepy PSA for child abuse awareness. The live action direction is subtle but powerful, and the texturing, animation and compositing of the tentacle are horribly convincing. The concept gets under your skin and sticks with you hours after the visuals have faded away.
Deciding how far to push the obvious reference to male genitalia must have been tricky. The spot wavers on both sides of the line—and I think that works very well.
The spot was directed by Rokkit’s The Vikings, who also brought us one of my favorite PSAs in recent memory: “Power of Wind.”
UPDATE: The credits have been amended with a little help from Barry Walsh at Boards Magazine.
Credits:
Client: Dunkelziffer
Agency: Red Rabbit
Creative Director: Oliver Seltmann, Jan Fröscher
Copywriter: Joakim Reveman, Bjoern Ruehmann, Matthew Branning
Art Director: Bjoern Ruehmann, Joakim Reveman, Matthew Branning
Director: The Vikings
Production: Rokkit
Producer: Luke Jacobs
Director of Photography: Sam Brown
Editor: Paul Hardcastle
Sound: 750 mph
Post Production: Absolute
VFX Producer: Lisa Vaughan
3D: Matt Burn, Jamie White, Toby Walton, Richard Nelson, Nicolas d’Haussy, Minh Nguyen-Ba, Vania Alban-Zapata, Maru Ocantos
2D VFX: Nathan Kane