Angelo Cerisara on Throwing a Body Horror Office Rave for YoungCapital

A body horror gen-z rave is what best describes youth employment agency YoungCapital’s new ad, ‘Boost Your Boomer’.

An imaginative take on the idea that zoomers and boomers can learn from one another in the workplace, the integrated campaign from ACE and Hamlet’s Angelo Cerisara revolves around the premise that gen z extract can be farmed and ingested by older generations in the workplace. The extraction scene is one of the grossest openings to an ad I’ve seen in a while – think glowing and pulsating yellow masses with the ickiest sound design to match.

Once essence of gen z has been harvested, it’s infused into a suspiciously thick energy drink (150,000 cans of which are actually available to buy) and guzzled up by their elder colleagues. Suddenly, the generation gap closes, and they’re working with renewed (and unhinged) vigour, drawing dolphins on excel and coming up with elaborate handshakes with their younger counterparts.

And then they all rave together. Around a six tier cake. While a winged gen z, suspended from the ceiling, pours the fluorescent orange liquid over its white icing.

Obviously, a film like that leaves you with questions. How does gen z plus the workplace equal a body horror rave? And what are those horrific yellow masses made from? To resolve these and more, LBB’s Zara Naseer got the behind-the-scenes intel from Angelo himself.

Above: Hamlet director Angelo Cerisara

LBB> The concept of gen z in the workplace doesn’t typically bring to mind body horror and raves – how did these ideas first come about? What brief were you working from?

Angelo> The brief was something like farming gen z to extract an energy drink from their body to feed thirsty boomers. It’s a metaphor, of course, but that felt horror to me since the first time I read it – but perhaps I am just a Cronenberg fan so I read it that way. 

LBB> The extraction scene is impressively gross – how did you maximise this? What were the yellow masses made from?

Angelo> Lots of slime. We used an enormous amount of it to cover the basement set. The entire space had this surreal, slimy quality; it was like walking on a giant slug. That’s how we achieved the shiny highlights in the darkness. 

LBB> Aside from the infusion of gen z extract, the film gets a lot of its energy from the music. How was that selected?

Angelo> I work closely with Xavier Andrew, a DJ based in London. We’ve done many projects together now. I try to get some sound design bits embedded in the track. By the time we have an offline, the track isn’t just a placeholder, it’s already a composed piece. It makes the music feel fully integrated rather than an afterthought.

LBB> What was your direction for the gen z-ers and boomers in the film? What dynamic were you looking to curate?

Angelo> Boomers had to be spiritually connected to their paired zoomer. It’s a chemically-driven office romance, but instead of love, it’s pure productivity. It’s a dynamic of dependence, like a workplace symbiosis, that makes their interactions feel both surreal and fun.

LBB> How did you work to challenge preconceptions about gen z and boomers through this campaign film?

Angelo> Both generations in the film exist in a world built with the eyes of the other. Boomers are slow typers and they get stuck in front of their screens, while zoomers bring office ‘skills’ like drawing dolphins in Excel, or ridiculous handshakes with outrageously stylish outfits. It was about finding an equilibrium between both sides and letting the two clash together.

LBB> What was the most interesting challenge you faced during production, and how did you tackle it?

Angelo> Figuring out how gen z were being milked and ending up with big breathing potatoes was definitely the most interesting part. I love sci-fi when it feels organic and tactile – something that you could reach out and touch, but would feel disturbingly strange if you did. 

Above: BTS shot from the YoungCapital shoot