Collaborative Practice: Week 1 - Fur for Animals Preliminary Research

For collaborative practice, we are set to work in groups (AGAIN!) with graphic designers and illustrators to work on a brief either from D&AD or YCN. I chose to work with Galuh and Alicja who are both illustrators interested in doing a campaign for Fur for Animals. We had our first meeting in which we read the briefs together, watched some videos relevant to the briefs, and break down what we have to do and make mini deadlines to keep us in track since we do not have much time to spend on this project (Deadline is 22th of March! Damn...).

Dissecting the Brief

Fur for Animals want to appeal to fashion buyers, specifically from Russia and China who have the most affinity towards buying fur products. They are the ones who keeps the industry going. What is wrong with the fur industry? Unethical treatment towards animals, violence and caging are the most prominent issues. The industry are indifferent to the animals well-being, they only cared about the financial gains. I have seen a lot of publications questioning ethical practice in the industry. Some of them are quite graphic documentary especially the ones made by PETA, which a lot of people dismiss as 'taking it too far'. Fur for Animals brief are looking for a campaign that does not depict violence, but still serves its purpose to discourage people from buying furs. Some other requirements of the briefs: maximum 2 minutes long, 3 second windows must work without audio (probably for Facebook), appeal to international audience especially Russian and Chinese buyers.

Videos

We start off our research by watching 'Dumb Animals' as suggested by the brief. The narrative contrasts glamour and violence which are the two main contention of buying fur and ended with a tagline 'It takes 40 Dumb Animals to make a fur coat, and it only takes one to wear it.' We think that the provocative dark jokes is appropriate and appealing to mature audience. The transition glamour and awkwardly pretentious audience in a fashion show and the blood spurting scene contrasts the 'presumed' good and the bad pretty nicely. 

We watched some other videos to find out about the unethical treatment towards the animal and also a documentary that explains why people in Russia loves fur coat. These three following videos are the ones that introduces different viewpoints and got our discussion going:

1. Fur Farms

This video shows the animal cruelty happening in the farm, in which animals are caged in a really small cage, looking distressed, jumping around and continuously pacing. Makes me feel claustrophobic and wants to vomit. It is not so much of a graphic video, but the mental strain is so visible. It makes us understand how bad they treat the animals in the farm in contrast to free range livestocks, such as chickens, cows and sheep that roams around freely in the grass plains.

2. Fur Coats

The Russian buys fur for fashion trend and temperature. There is a silver lining between beauty and need here. We are aware that winter in Russia is horribly cold, normally around -40 degree celcius, there are many fatalities caused by the winter. They need the extra warmth which can be offered by a fur coat. Although there are many other types of alternative outerwears that can keep them warm, those who can afford fur coat are more likely to buy it because fur coat gives a timeless look. 'Fur never goes out of style.' Due to the close distance between the two countries, China might have similar winter to Russia. China's rapid economic growth might influence more consumption of fur from its middle class who wants to show off their prosperity especially since fur symbolises a status of the privileged.

3. A YouTube Star who Kills Animals for Fur

Other than the seller and buyer factors (industry), there are also cultural aspect in killing animals for fur. This guy from Canada lives to hunt. For the people who hunt like him, they often kill animals to keep traditions alive.

What do we want to work on?

We had considered some of the different viewpoints on killing animals for their fur, which makes us want to do the brief even more. As cliched as it seems, we shared the same point of view that we want to make a difference. Although we three are good at different things, we decided that we want to make an animation probably a minute long, in collage style. The idea of turning something funny into fucked might be what we are going for. We want to make the process as fun and less daunting as possible. For the next week, we planned to have our ideas ready and pitch it to in a group meeting. What I will do for next week is to come up with a story, researching the medium we are using and the narrowing down the context we want to focus on.

What is Literature for? from Marcus Armitage on Vimeo.