Photo Credit: Greenpeace
Greenpeace have brought some heavyweight voice talent on board for their latest campaign film, highlighting the shocking extent of the threat to ocean health, and the dangers and stresses our oceans are facing.
In the animation, Camila Cabello voices an eel, trying to help Jane Fonda’s determined flying fish to reach safety and clean water – it feels like a very bleak spin on Finding Nemo. The pair encounter plastics, deep sea mining, industrial fishing nets and dead fish on their journey. The flying fish ends up on her own, after mistakenly following debris that looks like the eel, before being rescued and helped out of the murk to the sanctuary of clean waters by a friendly whale, voiced by Mission Impossible actor Simon Pegg, a longtime Greenpeace supporter.
The ad finishes with Pegg’s voiceover, highlighting, ‘Our oceans are under threat and time is running out. World leaders finally agreed a Global Ocean Treaty that can protect the oceans, our home. Now they must use this Treaty to create ocean sanctuaries where marine life can recover and thrive.’
Pegg said of his involvement, ‘The oceans are important to everybody. They’re such a vast and integral part of the planet’s survival mechanism. It would be an act of utmost stupidity to let them go to ruin, and yet a lot of the time we seem to be allowing practices which do absolutely that. So it’s really important to get behind causes which look to conserve and protect our ocean and all the life that lives in it.’
Fiona Nicholls of Greenpeace’s Protect The Oceans campaign said: ‘Ocean sanctuaries provide relief from the growing threats that sea creatures face from climate breakdown, pollution and overfishing. But as well as giving wildlife and ecosystems a fighting chance, they sustain the billions of people who still get nourishment and a livelihood from the ocean.
‘Greenpeace is thrilled to have some of the world’s best-loved actors lend their voices to this critical issue that affects us all.’
A global study by Greenpeace details how ocean warming, acidification, pollution and the emerging threat of deep-sea mining are putting ocean ecosystems under tremendous strain. The animated short is part of the promotion for this report.
The refuge that the whale, eel and flying fish find is a protected ocean sanctuary, which can be established under the Global Ocean Treaty. Currently less than 1% of the high seas have this kind of protection; to reach a ‘30x30’ (i.e. protecting 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030) target, Greenpeace estimates around 11 million sq km of ocean must be protected every year. To put that figure into perspective, it’s more than the surface of the UK and Canada combined.
The Team Dive In
The short film was produced by Bristol-based studio Rumpus Animations. Stef Bowskill, the company’s Creative Producer, told AnimationUK.org that, ‘We were ambitious with our pitch and pushed our character-driven ideas, because it’s what we do best. Hand-drawn animation is, for us, the best way to get the most expressive results, and it’s wonderful that we were recognised by such a high-profile organisation. We’re really proud of the message behind the animation and the twists and turns of the story.’ However, even Stef confesses, ‘We never expected the characters to be voiced by such huge actors!’ She praised the energy they brought to the roles, which meant they were ‘a joy to animate.’
The hard-hitting film is supported by a haunting soundtrack with some heavy percussive blasts and metallic-sounding strikes at particularly dramatic moments, followed by more hopeful, spiritual gong sounds at the end.
All in all, this is a highly emotive and effective campaign film that uses the best in animation to tell its story.
Ad-spiration
Explore the best campaign work from other brands in our deep dives, from the top ads of 2022 to IKEA’s Wonderful Everyday campaign. Or check in on The Edit, for our pick of the ads each month – plus, find out which animations have used classical music to the best effect.
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