Heckler Brings to Life a Shape-Shifting Monster That Stamps Out Gendered Violence

Heckler tackles WorkSafe Victoria’s new “It Comes In Many Forms’ public education campaign with a dark cloud simulation comprising 20 million particles. Launched in June this year, the campaign by TBWA\Melbourne and OMD addresses the many forms of gendered violence faced in the workplace. Heckler was tasked to create a powerful visual representation to demystify the term.

The shape-shifting entity was created by Cody Amos who developed both the look and the technical system and directed the 30-second spot. “One interesting aspect is that it’s a very technical process to create the actual simulations. Part of the process was trying different types of particle or volumetric simulations, and then exploring the different looks or styles you can get out of a specific technique, says Cody.

According to WorkSafe director of marketing Kristy Taylor, they wanted the campaign visuals to “help build awareness about what work-related gendered violence is and to give a sense of the menacing and insidious nature of this type of behaviour”.

“Using a dark cloud to give shape to different types of gendered violence helps identify inappropriate behaviour and sends a clear message that every Victorian has the right to feel safe and respected at work, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation,” she adds.

The brief required the production prowess of a company that wields both technical and creative expertise to bring to life just the right kind of ‘monster’. The process began from a technical perspective to determine the ideal look, form and texture to create. Cody shares that a variety of different looks were presented.

“Those looks were driven by all sorts of different things, including various particle types that were simulated more like sand or more like water, or smoky volumetric simulations. But essentially all that just boiled down to simple questions, like what texture do we like better? What shapes are more appealing? Do we like this sort of motion? Is this something we’ve seen before? I think we were all looking for something that felt a bit new. Something that made you not sure what it was supposed to be made of. It’s a sort of sandy smoky look in the end. It’s fluid and dynamic. It’s menacing, but not overly horrific,” says Cody.

“The other thing we spent a lot of time developing was how much of the underlying shape do we reveal, and how much do we obscure. So if the main shape is a hand creepily stroking the ground, we could control how well you can see that shape, by controlling how hard each particle is trying to follow that animation. Some of the particles are just lazy and drifting around the perimeter.”

The environment was another important consideration to convey the message that gendered violence can happen anywhere, whether it’s in a blue-collar work environment or a corporate one. Cody selected two backgrounds – one office and one warehouse – and planned to shoot both with the exact same camera movement for the 30-second spot. He accomplished that by taking stock footage and turning it into a 3D environment where camera movement could be controlled.

Cody and sound designer Dave Robertson share more with LBB’s Esther Faith Lew on the technical details of their creative approach.

Heckler director Cody Amos

Cody> Right from the treatment stage, I got it in my head that the shapeshifter is an entity made up of memories. Every instance of gendered violence that the entity has witnessed has contributed to creating that entity. So it’s full of, or made of, horrible scenes that are playing out over and over in its memory. The memory that the entity focuses on dictates the main shape that it takes, thus creating a shapeshifter. 

I thought this was a nice rationale that fit well with the message. All the different acts of gendered violence, no matter how seemingly trivial are contributing to creating an overall monster, or an overarching issue that we name ‘gendered violence’.

This idea contributed to the visuals but also especially to the sound design. We worked closely with guys at Heckler Sound in Sydney to create a sort of soundscape. The idea being that we can hear those violent scenes playing out, echoing from within the entity the whole time. The team recorded a bunch of different voice actors acting out different scenes. Those recordings then got garbled and mixed into the soundscape. All these different human voices create a really menacing and layered soundtrack. 

Cody> We chose stock footage that felt right. A modern looking office and warehouse. Something with enough space to have our animation play out in the middle, and with a good balance of interesting, but not distracting. 

Then we created 3D geometry that exactly matched that footage and projected our footage onto that 3D geometry. This required a lot of painstaking work, painting information behind desks and things that we don’t actually see in the original footage. But, once that hard work is done, we now have control of the camera, just like a 3D animated film. Only it looks photoreal because we started with real footage. 

I actually recorded the camera motion with a tablet, walking around our real office. I thought it would be cool if it felt like a hand held camera. So we could react to different moments throughout. Panning up shakily when the shapeshifter towers above us, moving forward tentatively at the beginning, but then abruptly backing up in fright, when the creature rushes towards us. 

Cody> The single shot idea seemed natural to me, simply because the whole idea was watching the entity changing form. So with a single shot, we get to watch exactly what the entity is doing the entire time. 

During the previs stage, we put a lot of work into figuring out the pacing. There’s a lot of content to get into a 30-second spot. So getting it all in without it feeling rushed was tricky. We also wanted to have it feel like there were highs and lows. This was especially important to the client. Some of that was definitely built into the script from the start. We begin with forms that are threatening but not overly intense. Then we ramp up to voices hurling abuse, which is fairly intense. And then take the intensity down a notch, but the creepiness up a notch, with a creepy hand “brushing up against you”. From there, we suddenly rush the camera and it builds to a quick crescendo, followed by everything dissipating, the lights coming on and the monster vanishing. 

Cody> We collaborated with Heckler Sound to create the music and sound for the WorkSafe campaign. The idea was carried from atonal and unsettling drones featuring human voices murmuring to dark sustained notes and rises. This was the foundation for the sound design to co-exist on top of. Utilising the human voice as the primary instrument, Heckler Sound created a sonic landscape by sculpting and shaping over 40 layers of human voices ranging from quiet whispers right up to hurling abuse, and ultimately embodying the sound of the dynamic and shape-shifting cloud we see in the film. 

Dave> The challenge for us was in creating a sonic environment using only the human voice, and try to bring depth and movement to match the stunning VFX, creating an unsettling soundscape without it being a horror piece.

I suppose the lights coming on and the shapeshifter spreading out could be read a couple of ways. The positive is that when we shine a light on the issue, we drive it away. The less optimistic is that it’s always there; hiding in the shadows.