A man is seated at a table, his back to the camera, which draws in closer. The doorbell rings and the man gets up to see who’s there. But the camera remains fixed on the workspace; the guy’s leaving reveals a laptop computer on the table.
The camera zooms in on the computer screen, where we see a child trapped in the computer. The kid’s palms touch the screen; it’s as if the youngster is struggling to get out of a glass prison, but to no avail.
A super against a black background reads, “Online child pornography is real abuse.”
A follow-up super continues, “People who view it are the real abusers.”
A tag identifying the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) as the sponsor, accompanied by the message, “Child abuse must stop,” then appears on screen.
“Child Porn” was directed by Ric Cantor of Outsider, London, for Saatchi & Saatchi, London. Benji Howell was the producer. The DPs were Alex Barber and Tatt Radcliffe.
The Saatchi creatives were Luke Simkins and Hussain Moloobhoy, with John Doris serving as agency producer.
Editor was Nick McCahartey of Triangle, London. Flame artist was Triangle’s Mark Beardall. Colorist was Stefan Perry of Framestore CFC. Audio engineer/sound designer was Jack Sedgwick of Wave Recording Studios, London.
Sound played an integral role in advancing the spot premise. “I needed to emphasize the child bursting on the screen from inside the laptop,” said Sedgwick. “We all wanted to keep al the sounds up to this point as natural as possible to lull the viewer into a false sense of security; then the sounds for the child needed to jump out. For this, I used a child sounding scared, mixed in with some haunting, reverberating screams.”
