#TBT: Reflecting on Animal Captivity During Lockdown

Looking back at 2020, we can say that the past year was a difficult one and was one for the history books. The lockdown, associated with the pandemic, made many people feel like they were living in captivity. For humanity though, the lockdown was temporary. But, the same cannot be said about wild animals, with many of them ending up spending their entire lives in lockdown.

Wanting to highlight the struggles of wild animals living in captivity across the globe, Born Free Foundation teamed up with animation studio Aardman and creative agency ENGINE, launching an animated video featuring stories about what’s like living under lockdown. Titled “Creature Discomforts: Life in Lockdown,” the short film plays on Creature Comforts construct and uses real interviews of people living under lockdown but put in the context of captive animals, thus making us reflect on the way these creatures live.

During this week’s #ThrowBrandThursday, we are reminding you of the way the team used people’s lockdown experiences to narrate the lives of animals in captivity. Millions of wild animals live in zoos, circuses, dolphinariums, or as being pets. Trapped in a cage, these animals are not given options on how to spend time. They have no choice when it comes to what and when to eat. Many animals are separated from their families or social companions. It is likely that these “activities” sound familiar to us in times of lockdown. But for us humans, captivity is temporary. For wild animals, this is forever.

Similar to humans, animals deprived of freedom can experience feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and depression, with both their physical and mental health being often deteriorated. The lockdown situation seemed to be a good opportunity to highlight the way these creatures live, triggering viewers’ empathy and encouraging them to seriously reflect on this issue.

Dr. Chris Draper, Head of Animal Welfare and Captivity for Born Free, said: “Many of us will have suffered the restrictions and inconvenience of lockdown in recent months. In many ways, this has given us just a brief insight into the frustrations and compromise that wild animals in captivity face for their entire lives. This short film encourages us to rethink captivity, and reconsider zoos, dolphinaria, circuses, and the exotic pet trade from the animals’ perspective.”

“Lockdown provided us with a unique opportunity to talk to people about animal captivity in a way that they could really empathize with. Collaborating with the incredibly talented folk at Aardman and Jungle, we were able to create an ad that hopefully gets people thinking and does justice to the legacy of Creature Comforts while giving it a fresh, topical, and heart-wrenching twist,” Steve Hawthorne, Creative Director, ENGINE Creative, explained.

Directed by Academy Award- and BAFTA-nominated director Peter Peake, the film uses interviews from people across the UK, which were recorded during the lockdown. To make sure that the participants were honest, they were not told about the true purpose of the project until after the interviews were completed. The characters in the videos were designed to match the voices, whilst the backgrounds were created so that the audience can notice the harsh conditions that captive wild animals are forced to live. The 2D animation was entirely developed under lockdown conditions and all meetings, production, and animations were carried out remotely.

Director Peter Peake at Aardman added: “It was a real pleasure to team up with Born Free and to be able to use a classic Aardman style in a topical context for such an important cause. Although lockdown presented us with challenges in production terms, it inspired some really poignant and touching insights from our interviewees. I was also bowled over by how my small but perfectly formed crew came together so cohesively despite working remotely. We’ll all remember lockdown for a long time to come and it was great to have a project like this to get me through it.”

Another past collaboration between ENGINE and Born Free materialized in the “The Bitter Bond” film, a campaign made to raise awareness about lion farming and canned hunting in South Africa. With no media spend, the initiative gathered over 11 million views and over 250,000 petition signatures.