White Square | Белый Квадрат

Entries

Name

Antidepressant

Advertised product

Charity Fund

idea

This is the first social advertisement for the fund for the elderly created in the language of ... youth. The most unexpected social mockumentary video of 2024 weaves together the documentary truth about the life pain of young people and the wise vision of the situation of the elderly. Thus, the video promotes volunteering as an antidepressant for young people. The direction combined a documentary and feature approach. The background voiceover consists of non-scripted recordings from the protagonists during callback interviews. Meanwhile, the visuals reconstruct their lifestyle, workplaces, and interests. The director combined young and elderly cast to create that perfect match that could appear in real life. In youth cast the team was looking for truthful characters who could sincerely share their real anxieties and problems and it was important that these problems were universal for Gen-Z and their monologues drove all the plot. The elderly cast listened to those monologues and responded using their own experiences and thoughts on the subjects. Only after this voiceover research and pre-production was finished and started generating true emotions and connection in voiceover the director was ready to plan the reconstruction shots. The stories behind them – getting panic attacks on the street, having an unwanted janitor side-job, going to pool to overcome hard feelings, was also drawn from the interviews and research of real life experiences. All the emotions recorded on set were connected to the real problems that the characters were sharing in interviews and the direction was very subtle, just helping non-actors to channel what they feel in their perfomances.