PFL Finishes Stroke Awareness Campaign For COI

Prime Focus London has completed the post-production on a new ad campaign which is aimed at raising awareness of the symptoms of a stroke.
Production company Annex Films, working on behalf of the Central Office of Information (COI), approached Prime Focus London to work on the project, which required extensive Flame and grading work.
The government-backed campaign, which is being used across all media, features two TV ads - one aimed at men, one at women - focusing closely on the victims' face as they suffer a stroke, showing the symptoms and the resulting effects.
Celebrated portrait and character photographer, Alastair Thain, was called in to direct the project, a role he was ideal for given his experience of capturing facial expressions. He said: "I was really pleased with the project overall, it promotes awareness of such an important issue, one that not many people seem to know about, so we had to get it right.
"Prime Focus London did an outstandingly good job; everything came out just as we hoped it would. It was a smooth experience and everyone brought their abilities to the project and I think it shows in the finished version."
Tom Russell graded the project using Baselight at Prime Focus London: "The brief from the client was one of hyper-reality, a picture that draws you in without seeming to have been manipulated in the post environment, and keeping a film-like look. The result was a compellingly naturalistic and beautiful set of pictures. The resolution of the original Red files was 4K. This resolution was maintained through the post production process on those shots where a large zoom into the picture was required. The remainder of the film was graded at 2K."
Prime Focus London's Tim Davies was the project's Flame operator: "Alastair shot some great textures for the fire; it was a case of finding the right combination of these images and working them into a final look which felt right. I spent a while trying out different looks. There was a fine line between the fire looking too scary or too comical; it was a case of recognising what worked and what didn't and eventually it all clicked into place. There was a lot of tracking which Flame dealt with incredibly well. I was able to use the warper/distort modules for face manipulation."
The result is a powerful campaign, pushing the message FAST- Face, Arm, Speech, Time to call 999 - a simple test to recognise a stroke and encourage swift action.
(KMcA/JM)