A Guardian
Over & Above Africa
Issue 50 | February 2019
Agency
Dog Beach
Creative Team
Creative Director/Writer Andy Fackrell Art Director Mariya Munsey
Production Team
Giant Films, Cape Town Director Sam Coleman US Producer Shannon Worley DOP Devin Tosselli Executive Producer Cindy Gabriel Producer Boris Vossgater Production Manager Nella Coetzer Drone Camera Operator Simeon Hamman Editor Adam Pertofsky Post Production A52, Los Angeles
Other Credits
Music licensing Aaron Mercer, Wool & Tusk Music “Under The Trees’ Voices” Ezio Bosso, Sony Music Italy. Clients OAAA Founder Kerry David OAAA Exec Director Jennifer Pfister
Date
October 2018
Background
Drone technology is proving to be a saviour for Africa’s endangered animal groups. Drone surveillance has increased their survival chances by up to 80%.
Yet ranger groups are underfunded and desperately need the technology to compensate for their lack of numbers.
Idea
The genre of animal collective nouns acted as the narrative thread in this emotional rollercoaster of a film for LA–based OverAndAboveAfrica, a charity that raises funds to support people and organisations in Africa who are actively preventing the extinction of endangered species.
From dawn to dusk, the film presented a series of swooping aerial shots of animal groups, each titled with the respective collective nouns – a pride of lions, a wobble of ostrich, an implausibility of gnu – before tracking ‘a gang’ of poachers on the drone’s night vision camera.
Launched by rangers on the ground in South Africa, the collective of drones is coined ‘A Guardian.’
Results
Not yet available.
Our Thoughts
In Africa, elephant numbers have dropped by 30% in under ten years. There are 42% fewer lions than there were twenty years ago. The global giraffe population is down 40% since 1989. And so on.
This is a cause close to my heart. And I applaud Andy Fackrell for doing what so many creative people could do but which so few actually do do: and that is get involved and use the amazing opportunities tech has given us all to reach across the world.
It was Edmund Burke who said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
No agency, no client with vast resources, what we have here is just a good man trying to do something.