Aardman animation shines light on mental health worldwide

The Academy Award®-winning studio that made Shaun the Sheep and Wallace and Gromit has created a film to underline how mental ill health is a global issue, affecting everyone, everywhere.

 

The thought-provoking animation by Aardman is set inside a head-shaped printer’s tray filled with bits and bobs, such as little figures hugging, a coin jar, a spinning globe, and a person ready at the end of a phone line. As the narrator, Stephen Fry, talks about different aspects of the global scale of mental health, the camera zooms in on the element which illustrates the point being made.

“We set the film in an attic, as a metaphor for how mental health is stigmatised, underfunded, hidden away in the recesses of global health budget,” says the director Danny Capozzi, “and then – click- we shine much-needed light on the subject. We hope the film can help to bring mental health out of the darkness and into the light.”

Aardman filmed the stop-frame animation with 3D cameras in a real-life shop in Bristol and handmade elements were brought to life with a combination of animation effects. The script was written by the Havas Lynx, Cannes Lions Healthcare agency of the year.

Our aim is to help the global mental health community win support to change how mental health is funded and treated. You can help by sharing this film with the hashtag #TimeToAct and by talking about its message.

The animation ends by saying, “… Let’s create a world where everyone, everywhere has someone to turn to support their mental health. The effect would transform our future – our schools, our businesses, our communities, whole countries in fact. Because if we change our attitudes to mental health, we change the world.”