This Darkly Hilarious Film Targets Ageism in the Creative Industry
Kiran Koshy of broadcasting and media production company Raucous Content directed the latest film in collaboration with the FAAAC, addressing ageism in the workplace, particularly in the advertising space.
The dark yet comedic film exposes the truth of ageism in the workplace, especially within creative departments. In collaboration with Koshy, the agency creatives teamed up to tackle an issue that hits close to home through the creation of the two-minute and 30-second film that exposes the truth of what it means to have a creative career in advertising today. In alignment with the ad awards season that vows to 'celebrate creativity', the film was released with the intention to call attention to the industry that tacitly fuels chronic age discrimination towards the people behind the creativity, for profit, without the desire to acknowledge or remedy it.
“As a former agency creative, I’m very aware of this issue, and it’s something I care about deeply as most of my friends are still agency creatives,” shares Koshy. “I really gravitated towards the idea the FAAAC team had about creating the most honest recruitment ad for the ad industry ever, to expose the guts of the problem. We worked on making sure the script didn’t rely on hyperbole as the truth was shocking enough and just needed to be told well. Every line is rooted in the truth, and it’s a dark piece because the truth is dark, and we should all be outraged. However, we did balance it with deliberate humor to make for a more engaging piece.”
The FAAAC was founded by an anonymous group of agency creatives on a mission to shine light on the problem of ageism in the workplace, wrecking their careers, to fight it and warn young talent considering a career in advertising about its pitfalls, starting with this film that exposes the unvarnished truth about what a creative career has truly become.
Koshy explains: “I’ve seen a lot of my incredibly talented friends be discarded by the industry in their prime, and I’ve seen how it’s affected their mental well-being and family life,” he says. “Almost everyone in their 40s questions if they made the right choice in getting into the business and the industry has quite consciously promoted the myth that younger people are more creative because it lets them lower salaries and squeeze margins.”
“The response to the article has been very gratifying,” enthuses Koshy. “It’s an issue no one is doing anything about and the time is right for us to take it on.”
Nice Shoes colourist Sal Malfitano who completed the colour grade on the spot states “It was a blast grading this brilliantly funny PSA with Kiran. We wanted to go for an office vibe that skewed toward a cool palette but also maintain good skin tones. We resisted getting overly contrasty and we used layers of soft vignettes to draw our eyes to the center part of the frame without feeling heavy. Some film grain rounded out the texture we were looking for.”
The director notes that the entire crew, and post, including Charlie Uniform Tango and Nice Shoes, donated time and resources to make the film, “It’s something they all believed in,” concludes Koshy.
