UroLift’s Prostate Monster is big, pink, and fluffy, with a subtly engaging performance. Directed by Liam Chapple for First Person, Carbon tapped into their CG creature comforts on this brand new campaign.
“We were over the moon when we received the creative brief from First Person,” says Chapple. “They charged us with interpreting and expanding upon the concepts and characters they developed. Each vignette tackles different issues men with enlarged prostates face. Using light comedy as a vehicle to promote men’s health issues via a pink, fluffy monster? Sign me up.”
This was a full script-to-ship project for the Carbon team, starting with planning all aspects of the shoot, while First Person’s Stefan Mumaw and Eric Melin led the scripting and narrative development, bringing a clear creative vision and deep understanding of how the monster needed to behave across the broader campaign.
“I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to develop the monster and create his personality before the shoot, then dial in his performance in the VFX process with the Carbon team!” continues Chapple. “We worked closely with First Person throughout the concepting, script writing, storyboarding, and pre-production stages. They were amazing collaborators and gave us as much creative freedom as we could have asked for. They were always there for the details of the client and product, which of course they knew in depth after so many months of development. We had great chats where a question would arise, be diplomatically and openly discussed, and a decision could be made, right away. The dream!”
To bring the unforgettable Prostate Monster to life, Liam and team spent a lot of time exploring his character; what his motives are and how he feels. “He’s big and lumbering, so he doesn’t turn his head when he looks, instead he turns his whole upper body from the hips. He’s not malicious, and he feels kind of guilty when he disturbs his host, so we leaned into grimacing to portray this sort of emotion.”
“To make him feel big and heavy, we focused on reducing his movements to a bare minimum. We wanted him to seem as human as possible, and layered lots of micro movements into his performance. One of my favorite moments is the little knee squeeze in the story time shot. We meticulously discussed how many blinks there should be and when they should happen. I loved diving into those sorts of details with Stefan Mumaw, Director of Narrative Strategy, and Eric Melin, Creative Director, at First Person,” Ends Chapple.
Designed to spark conversations and connect patients, get a peek behind the scenes in the making of.
