Your Shot: 4Creative and Smith & Foulkes Stand Up to Cancer

Cancer. Perhaps it’s not the most obvious subject for comedy, but it touches us all and when faced with tough times we humans often turn to gallows humour to get us through. The UK’s Channel 4 has been using comedy as a fundraising weapon to fight cancer since 2012 and this year their annual ‘Stand Up to Cancer’ event looks to be bigger than ever. That meant that the marketing around the event has had to be just as big and bold. That’s why the broadcaster’s in-house creative agency 4Creative joined forces with Nexus double act Smith & Foulkes to create a campaign of microscopic yet epic proportions. The spectacular animated trailer sees a city of cancer cells go into panic mode when hit by a mysterious, alien invader. LBB’s Laura Swinton caught up with Senior Art Director Pablo Gonzalez de la Pena to find out more…

LBB> When you were developing the idea behind the film, what was your starting point?

Pablo> The starting point was a ground-breaking message: For the first time in the UK, as many people now surviving as dying from the disease.  The tables have started to turn and now it’s our time to be the threatening ones.

LBB> With the Last Leg, Channel 4 has shown that it doesn’t feel the need to pussyfoot around disability head on, and with Stand Up to Cancer it’s doing the same with illness and cancer. What’s it like working on a brief like that?

Pablo> That tone of voice is a sort of Channel 4 signature. Every brief we face we know we have to say it like no other brand would do it. It’s in our DNA to be brave, risky and push the limits on every piece of work we put out there. It’s who we are.

LBB> Stand Up to Cancer has been going on for about three years now – how does this campaign build on or differ from previous campaigns?

Pablo> Cancer was one of the leading causes of death last year, with the chances of being diagnosed with the disease at one in three. This stat was the focus of our previous campaign. But we have reached a turning point in the fight against cancer. We felt that this allowed us to create a campaign with a much more defiant and ultimately hopeful tone than we had previously. 

LBB> What was the process like for developing the character design?

Pablo> Smith and Foulkes, the directors, said, “The main challenge was how to visualise the cancer cells. We wanted to steer away from the obvious route of showing cells as a bunch of grotesque alien germs, but we were also acutely aware of not making them too human or cute. We also had to find a way to illustrate the new therapies, drugs and scientific breakthroughs that are fighting cancer. We wanted their arrival to be initially magical and mysterious, so we used a glowing blue orb, an unexplained light descending upon a shadowy world."

LBB> The pairing of quite an epic story with the quirky, textured 3D style of the animation is a nice juxtaposition. Why did you think that this aesthetic approach was the best way to go?

Pablo> We felt this was the best way to anthropomorphise cancer cells, and therefore demonstrate the idea of the flip. 

Again, Smith & Foulkes: “Disaster movies rely heavily on vast visual spectacle and a cast of thousands, so working within our time constraints we decided to recreate this using 2D matt paintings to show a sense of the city without having to model every building. This gave it an illustrative and richly textured feel. Modelling and animating our cast in 3D gave us the flexibility of performance we wanted, and made them stand out from their environment.”

LBB> I love the individual characters that emerge from the mass of cancer cells – the merciless granny, the touped politician, the moustachioed builder – why was it important to give the cancer a personality? And which ones are your favourite characters?

Pablo> We wanted to create something that would empower people to stand up and throw cash in cancer's face. We did this by literally giving cancer a face. An unpleasant, pathetic, terrified and destroyable face. Then what better way to show the epic destruction of cancer than by utilising all the tropes the modern disaster has to offer. 

LBB> I think there’s a lot of comedy in sound design from Factory – the splutters and squelchy explosions and funny little Despicable Me-esque chatter – what was the process like working with them? What sort of sound were you after?

Pablo> Factory was amazing, because to be honest we didn’t have a clue about how the splats should sound. They did an accurate job. Not too funny, not too disgusting. 

LBB> What did Smith & Foulkes bring to the project?

Pablo> Everything. They have amazing animation skills and lots of experience with storytelling. They have been key in making the project what it is.

LBB>How does the film and the world you’ve created fit into the other activities around Stand Up to Cancer 2014?

Pablo> Many other things are about to be launched. I don’t want to spoil anything :)