Man Vs Magnet Tells a Touching Animated Tale for The Girl Effect

Man vs Magnet team up again to create an emotive film for The Girl Effect. 'Smart Economics' tells the story of 5 girls in Ethiopia, to overcome the pitfalls that face them everyday, the challenges they face and their potential to contribute to society. 

The Girl Effect is about leveraging the unique potential of adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves, their families, their communities, their countries and the world. The film illustrates what would happen if every Ethiopian girl had the chance to shape her own future and that of her country by reaching her full potential. The film’s message ‘It’s not complicated, it’s just smart economics’ demonstrates that if every girl had the opportunity to complete her education, it would add $4 billion USD to the country’s economy. 

The brief differs from Man Vs Magnet’s first film for Girl Effect back in 2008, by specifically focusing on Ethiopia, giving a more in depth and detailed story of 5 girls exclusively from that region. Matt Smithson, the man behind the Magnet said “We wanted to start where the last film left off, but move in a new direction, using more vibrant colours and textures. The goal was to create a photo collage technique that showed a somewhat realistic view of Ethiopia.” 

Matt crafted this unique and realistic technique for the film cleverly using collage and real photographs from Ethiopia. By cutting up the photo’s he had selected, and adding line and colour, he was able to create the scenes he had imagined. The result is a film that is distinctive and memorable, infused with colours focused around the Girl Hub branding. The stories in the film are based on data and evidence analysed in the Girl Hub Ethiopia study Girls and Income Growth in Ethiopia (2014).