Developing a campaign to encourage the adult female population of the country to sign up for the National Cervical Cancer Screening Programme was a daunting task. So it’s fitting that the actual production of our ad was one of the most technically complicated productions of our experience.

The concept itself was a simple one, show a woman slowly changing on the outside, growing older, as she explains that she is also changing on the inside and as a result needs to be regularly screened by CervicalCheck.

The practice of aging someone on camera from 25 to 60 proved to be anything but simple. The director Simon Levene, brought onboard the expertise of post house Finish. The plan was to do it completely with CGI and not resort to make-up or prosthetics. 

The first challenge was finding our woman. In reality we needed three women, who looked incredibly alike. We cast for families, we needed three generations of one family, who bore a strong resemblance to each other, and who were all also comfortable in front of the camera. The three women we finally cast were from the same family, a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter. 

We filmed the ad on location in a park in Bray and also Ardmore Studios. We had to film the women speaking to camera against a green screen, as we needed to control their movements and distance from camera as much as possible. Finish took this footage and basically morphed the three women together, painstakingly painting out hair, and moving eyes, noses and lips between each frame. The face is constantly changing; it’s never any one of the women, but more a combination of all three. 

We’re so pleased with the final ad, it’s just mesmerizing and more importantly it dramatically articulates the need for women to be regularly screened for cervical cancer.