Hidden Trafficking

The moments after a suspected victim of trafficking is rescued are known as ‘The Golden Hour’ by caregivers and the authorities. It’s in that hour that many victims of trafficking will decide to accept the help offered or refuse the help and absent themselves. We were approached by a group of charities working in this field who currently had very little in the way of resources to provide a positive influence on that ‘Golden Hour’.  They had leaflets which they would give to a victim of trafficking to help explain their situation to them in their own language, but upon being bought out of a situation and being given a few pages of literature to read, when sometimes literacy is low, is not an ideal situation.

We were asked to essentially create a short animation version of the information in the leaflet. Explaining that the person would be helped, that they’re not at fault, and how and why they might have been trafficked in the first place – explaining their situation back to them so they had understanding of the context of what they may have gone through, which is often a confusing and traumatic experience.  A key advantage of the film is that we created it without using text, just a voiceover track, which can easily be translated into numerous languages for easy access depending on the situation of the victim.  The difficult task we had was that trafficking happens in numerous different ways, in many different countries and with different effects on the victim, so we had to balance an attempt to explain trafficking in a universal way, so that it would be applicable to many people and many different stories, but also make it personal so that someone could really see themselves and their specific story in what we were describing.

Credits

Director & Producer
Jon Hardy
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Animation
Stef Roberts, Elisa Ciocca, Graeme Maguire
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Sound Design
James Ward, Jon Hardy
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Characters
Laura Doherty
James Ward
Jon Hardy
Stef Roberts
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UK Voiceover
Gemma Reynolds
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Consultants
Gaz Kishere, Lynn Chitty, Louise Jarvis, Barnados, Love 146, BACA
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Client
BACA
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Production Company
Scubaboy Inc

Project Completion October 2014