The Brain Cancer Centre launches ‘The Public Diagnosis’ awareness campaign via The Royals
Independent agency The Royals has developed a new campaign for The Brain Cancer Centre to raise awareness to one of Australia’s deadliest cancers.
Brain cancer kills more kids in Australia than any other disease and more people under 40 than any other cancer.
Brain cancer statistics are devastating. Once diagnosed, almost 80% of people won’t survive five years. Brain cancer is mostly terminal and survival rates have barely improved in 30 years. That makes getting more funding for research a desperate need.
When you are diagnosed with brain cancer, chances are you are told you won’t survive. This cancer is different. And this moment of brain cancer diagnosis – and the shattering wave of realisation it unleashes – is the centrepiece of a new campaign for The Brain Cancer Centre to raise awareness of this little known deadly disease.
Each execution features brave families who have let Australians in on these private, raw and unfiltered moments of diagnosis. The hope? Sharing these private moments will create widespread attention and help generate research funding.
The “Public Diagnosis” campaign was created by The Royals, leading a massive team including partners FINCH, Hatched Media and QMS as well as Oliver Grace and PXLCAT. The powerful work features the music track “Can’t get you out of my head” made famous by Australian music icon Kylie Minogue.
The campaign launches with ‘Room of Tears’, a short film that captures the moment Amy Stephenson’s son Lachie was diagnosed with diffuse midline glioma. He was 19. “The tears were streaking out of my eyes,” Amy recalls. “My world had just been torn apart.” Lachie’s response, “Jeez Mum, we could swim out of here in your tears”.
“Room of tears” is part of the first phase of the year-long campaign that uses the power of making private moments public.
Says Sam McGuane, CEO, The Brain Cancer Centre: “The Brain Cancer Centre was founded by Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation in partnership with WEHI in 2021. We have a groundbreaking collaborative research strategy with 16 research partners across the country. We have a plan that brings us towards our vision: that one day no lives are lost to brain cancer. We’ve got the best and brightest research minds, now we just need to back them.”
In 2015 television and radio personality Carrie Bickmore OAM won the Gold Logie award, which she dedicated to her late husband Greg who passed away from brain cancer.
She went on to form Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation, which has since raised over $21 million for brain cancer research.
Says Andrew Siwka, managing partner of the Royals: “All the families featured in this campaign were incredible through the making of this and I hope the bravery they displayed in donating these moments ultimately translates into the vitally needed financial support.”
Throughout the year, the Public Diagnosis campaign will turn “donated” diagnosis moments from families into art and exhibition pieces as well as immersive digital experiences to amplify awareness of brain cancer. To support The Brain Cancer Centre’s work, donations can be made at www.thebraincancercentre.org.au
VIEW THE FULL LAUNCH FILM HERE
Client: The Brain Cancer Centre
Agency: The Royals
Production Partners:
Short Film, 90” and 60”
Production Company: FINCH
Director: Michael Hili
Executive Producer: Loren Bradley
Producer: Bryce Lintern
Casting: Peta Einberg
DP: Sean Ryan
Production Designer: Charles Davis
Art Director: Sam Lukins
Editor: Delaney Murphy
Colourist: Alina Bermingham
Post Production: Atticus
Sound Production & Composition: Kiah Gossner (Cover: Kylie Minogue – Can’t get you out of my head)
30” and 15” ads
Production Company: PXLCAT
Director: Hossein Khodabandehloo bin Abolfazl
Executive Producer: Joel Fenton
DOP: Rudi Siira
1st AC: Ari Gillespie
Gaffer: Fluid productions
Editor & Colourist: Marco Cornelius
Mixing Engineer: Ben Anthony
PA: Otto Crosby
Studio: Lithium Studios
Website:
Design & UX: Oliver Grace
Development: dnpg.com
Video Animation: Soma Studios
Media agencies:
Hatched
QMS Media
33 Comments
At what point did anyone think making some pseudo-abstract music video for Brain Cancer was gunna hit?
Big Kev
@jfc get a heart mate.
Good craft
Agree with JFC. It’s not about not having a heart it’s about what works and what doesn’t. I want to like this but it came off a little try hard, overly cooked yet unrealistic emotionally and the very obvious poetry only confused me. Should I cry or should I laugh? Is this a parody of an ad? I really don’t know.
Positive side. Great to see the production company investing in this.
I like the imagery and glitchy edits on to the music but emotionally this falls flat. Maybe even less than flat if that’s possible. Would love to know the reasoning behind the edit. Bizarre
Yeah, different….baaaad. Should defo have been people in a doctor’s office, looking sad, chatting about brain cancer. Or maybe on Bondi Beach?
Actually it’s not at all different. It’s very much every cliche about ads in one ad. Let me prove that to you.
https://vimeo.com/491831315
the fact you’re having a crack at a spot that features the real mother who has lost her child says a lot about you and your idle hands.
this ad tackles the true emotion of loss – it doesn’t hide from it. and everyone involved should be proud of making it.
You seem confused and angry, which says a lot about how much you care about this ad. That’s great and I commend you on that.
But we’re not judging here the importance of what the ad is for or judging the mother and her loss. Those things are real and important.
What we are judging is if the ad works at doing what it’s suppose to do, evoke emotion, capture attention and then clearly state a message. I don’t think it does. Viewers will have no idea this is a real mother. It’s a nice idea for the ad but just because she lost a child doesn’t mean she’s great at acting and portraying that on screen. Maybe she would in a longer documentary explaining her story, but this is 1.5 min long and very much not a documentary, it’s abstract visual poetry, using very tried and used techniques. It’s also very much see say in a basic way that does almost seem like a parody. So regardless of the intent, the cause and the reality of the mother, I don’t think the end result here reached the objective. Actually to me it comes off shallow and I’m sorry to say ‘try hard hipster’. As in it made me roll my eyes because I think it trivialised a very serious and important topic.
On another point, my hands are rarely idle. I don’t know you so I have no idea what you do, but from the angry and naive tone of your retaliation I would bet I’ve made 500% more work than you, in fact, most likely more.
Next time try to step back and think more objectively about your own work, and you will improve with each piece. Also never assume you know who is on the other end of this comments section.
apologies original tin man
directing comment at @tin man
Its so sad I couldn’t get through it…
Agreed. The concept thought it was too great for it’s own good.
As someone who has had loved ones affected by cancer, that hit me in the gut. Wow.
Nice big Kelvin
Nice one Hili! Thought it felt really fresh. Huge craft.
there is a midpoint between bland wallpaper ad crap and over stylised trickery — finding that midpoint is where you find real emotional takeaways – where the film craft services the emotion but it’s obvious with your ALL OR NOTHING comment that you don’t get how filmmaking is all about servicing the “idea” not just being cool — its thinking like that which really makes this industry suck
This is wonderful film. Hooray for local talent!
Straight up misses the point.
Especially in PSA film, visual trickery/ film technique gets heavily criticised as being gratuitous at the best of times. This is a perfect example because we’re distracted away from an emotion message with this passé and trite visualisation of ‘a room full of tears’.
Just being honest.
I think you’re confusing film craft servicing a concept with arts and crafts. This falls more in the later for me. I’m sorry but a few multimedia flash edits in a montage and a visual metaphor that’s said and then shown as a reveal really doesn’t do much for me in terms of emotional craft or story craft. It also doesn’t excite me much technically in a ‘trickery’ sense either. I felt lost, not drawn in and empathetic.
You mustn’t have much work on at all if you have time to write that encyclopedia. I’d be embarrassed
We can play this I don’t know but you know game all you like. I’d be embarrassed about pulling the old ‘you must not have much work on if you have 5min to write a critique on this blog’ whilst you also continue to look at this blog yourself. Reality is what was written went over your head and so you think it would take anyone a long time to write it. You aren’t able to respond in an objective critical way so you resort to personal attacks about who’s working the most. Instead of getting angry because not everyone loved what you thought was genius, possibly be more self critical and humble and each piece of work you make will be better each time.
Save your critiques for the next beer ad.
Not this.
Be bigger. Do better.
Show this film to anyone who has experienced brain cancer in their friends and family circle and let me know if they have the same criticisms as you lot. Judging by the feedback on social media for this film, the comments above feel very far from the people this piece is talking to. Peace.
We don’t do beer ads here anymore.
Not good ones anyway.
It’s these kinds of ‘ads’ that should be most critiqued.
Is the money really being put to good use? Who’s really profiting from all this? Brain research?
it’s a debate about effectiveness, and from the conversation thus far, we mostly think a strong emotional message will do it – but lots of us think it’s too focussed on craft.
Maybe get out of your leather bound chair and do some pro bono yourself – you might have a positive impact on the world.
You make ads.
You don’t do all pro-bono work.
You do it to make something cool for your reel not because you care.
Let’s be real here.
Ad is fine for what it is but don’t make out that you’re out their doing good for the world. you got paid to do it.
Fighting your own demons in the comment section? *eye roll*
I liked the editing. I thought it serviced the idea as an attempt to represent what must be an overwhelming torrent of thoughts and memories (life *flashes* before your eyes, etc). Budget isn’t unlimited here so it also seems a decent way to work with the scenes that could be shot.
Agree with the comment about this type of ad should be most critiqued. It’s an important message that is a little lost in the ego of cool craft.
@production person on this job. Is this ad aimed at the people who have experienced brain cancer in their family circle? Are they the ones that are donating money to the cause? It’s quite easy to pull the heart strings of anyone that has had this experience close to them, they will get emotional at anything you show them that hints at the topic. They will write comments on social media about it.
What will the general public that have no experience with the topic feel about it. Is the message lost in hipster trickery or does it cut through?
You’re now writing to yourself under different names.
Give it a rest – go have your arvo nap.
The film is just one part of what looks like a bigger campaign.