Monday, Workplace Cancer Awareness
For the World Cancer Day, the Working with Cancer Foundation, created by Publicis Groupe, is launching a major awareness campaign called "Monday". The aim is to put an end to the stigmatisation and insecurity of people with cancer and to encourage solidarity in the workplace.
This campaign is dear to Arthur Sadoun, Chairman of the Management Board of Publicis Groupe, who was himself diagnosed with cancer. He had previously made a commitment in 2022, calling for the prevention of cancers linked to the papillomavirus in particular.
This script by Elena Petitti Di Roreto supported by Martin de Thurah tells the story of a man and a woman who return to work after their illnesses. It concludes with a reunion with their bosses and colleagues in a spirit of solidarity. This is a very real situation for many of us, who have to overcome stares and misunderstandings when returning to the workplace. As Marco Venturelli, Creative Director at Publicis, reminds us, "Behind every cancer, there is always an odyssey, physical, mental, very personal, and I wanted to show this in a film with a lot of emotion to create empathy in us all. That's what this campaign is about."
In this film produced by Henry, and post-produced by Prodigious, our studio was called in for the VFX part. Our Parisian artists are proud to have been able to contribute to this campaign because, let's not forget, The Mill Paris had already collaborated with the association RoseUp last October to raise funds dedicated to people suffering from cancer to support them from diagnosis, to treatment, to post-illness reintegration.
The campaign will benefit from high visibility thanks to the support of partners around the world. In addition to traditional media, it will also be broadcast during the Super Bowl on February 12th.
"The whole team was delighted to work on this project, and I was particularly pleased because I really liked the director's universe. In advertising we are used to bringing this vfx magic that magnifies every shot. This time we had to symbolise the disease in a poetic way which is a different exercise. From the beginning of the project we were immersed in many of the director's visual references and in particular the idea of ice and crystallization to symbolise the discomfort of the diseases. We had to prepare some elements before the shoot to be projected on the LED screens, such as the set of icy mountains. These elements were managed by the motion design team and particularly Alexandre Tarquini and Vincent Ewald. A lot of the effects were done by the production directly on the shoot. On our side we still had a few shots to do and of course we had to homogenise the whole film with the flame. Mathias Barday made the CG leg prosthesis, which is a fairly classic effect : we removed the shot leg, tracked the 3D, rotated the Anim to match the 3D on the actress' real leg and then we recreated the background. Karim Lachaize and Marouan El Bekri also did the FX shot of the crystallization on the leg with Houdini and a lot of 3D compositing. Technically there were no major difficulties, but artistically we had to take on board the theme and the director's intentions to find the right balance in each shot to raise awareness without offending. I think it's a very beautiful film, not far from a short film, and I was delighted to contribute to this great cause with the whole Mill Paris' team. - Vincent Venchiarutti, VFX Supervisor
"Our collaboration with the Publicis agency, Henry production, the post production studio Prodigious and the directors went very well. Prodigious took care of all the post-production and editing part and asked us to create the VFX, i.e. some shots such as those of the prosthesis and the cancer metaphor, without forgetting the harmonisation and smoothing of the whole film with Flame.
From a technical point of view there were no major difficulties but we had to be careful with the graphic style used. Indeed, the scenario is already moving, we really had to keep in mind the idea of "raising awareness" and not scaring or disgusting the viewers, especially since this campaign can be seen by young people. Whether it was Vincent Venchiarutti, Supervisor, Marouan El Bekri and Mathias Barday in 3D, Karim Lachaize on FX and the rest of the team, we were all delighted to be able to use our skills for this great cause. I think we are all proud of the work we have done and we hope that this campaign will contribute to more acceptance and solidarity for patients in the professional world." - Kahina Lamblin, VFX Producer
When the project arrived I found the shots and the film very aesthetically pleasing with good art direction for a good cause, which I really liked. On this project I was in charge of redoing the prosthesis in CG, a classic type of visual effect for the studio. The actress was shot with a green sock allowing us to erase her leg more easily. Then we modelled the prosthesis on Maya, and added the lights by working in 3D to composite it over the footage that we had previously cleaned. Our team organization was great because the effects required are punctual in the film which allowed each artist to managed a shot entirely alone. We were autonomous, each one moved forward and we consulted each other to see if all the effects respected the references given and the same graphic line. Our team was very cool with few graphic designers, giving us the opportunity to get to know each other individually. It was a nice human adventure." - Mathias Barday, CG Artist