How I helped Humane Society International’s Fur Free Britain campaign show the horror of fur farming

Show the horror without driving people away

Humane Society International wanted the public to understand what fur farming really involves. The footage that proves it is distressing, and distressing footage makes people look away, which defeats the point of the campaign.

Familiar faces, a familiar format

Primary objective: make fur farming impossible to ignore for a broad social audience, without distressing them into scrolling past.

We cast four people with their own audiences: Chris Packham, Lucy Watson, Peter Egan and Pete Wicks. We used the format everyone had just got used to, the conference call, so the film felt immediate rather than staged.

Not pretty, on purpose

It isn’t a beautifully lit film, and it doesn’t need to be. The webcam look is part of the message: it uses the situation we had all become accustomed to, which makes the reactions read as real rather than produced.

Four faces did the hard part

Four famous faces and a video call let a mass audience feel the reality of fur farming without having to watch it, and made the film one of Humane Society International’s most watched.