Leo Burnett Change Launches FastestHour

Leading UK charity Meningitis Now has teamed up with Leo Burnett Change, the specialist social change division of the Leo Burnett Group, to create the organisation’s first ever awareness film showing the shocking effects of the infection in just one minute.

The film, airing today (Monday 9 February) on Channel 5 in the UK, is also being hosted online and will be shown at selected cinemas. The intense piece seeks to raise awareness of the speed in which meningitis can take hold and tracks a young woman’s journey from feeling unwell to being kept alive in intensive care.

The campaign is part of the charity’s ongoing push to increase public knowledge of the disease, since symptoms are more complex than the commonly associated ‘rash’, and can kill in hours if untreated.

The hard-hitting film, shot by James Lawes with Bare Films, tells the real-life story of one young woman’s experience of meningitis and septicaemia, describing in detail the feelings and sensations she underwent in just a matter of hours, and revealing the full impact it had on her life.

Visceral vision

“From the outset what was important to us all was creating a film that demonstrated the speed in which the condition progresses - 'The fastest hour’. I started thinking about the experience one must go through under these circumstances and what came to me was the idea of being on a fairground ride that you can't get off, the notion of spinning upside down or round and round, gut churning and relentless,” explains director, Lawes.

“We customised Motion Control software to allow us to repeat a circular motion that travels up and over our central character, reappearing from her feet moments after leaving her in the previous scene. Each time we reappear, the scene has changed and her condition has worsened. The effect allowed us to travel very quickly through an hour time line within sixty seconds highlighting that terrifying stage of Meningitis”.

From tomorrow, the Meningitis Now will be sharing the film across social media channels along with the #FastestHour hashtag with viewers being urged to “Watch. Share. Be Aware”.

“A core aim of this short but impactful film is to ensure that young vulnerable adults wake up to the risk meningitis poses to them,” adds Sue Davie, CEO at Meningitis Now. “In the last year some 1500 people aged over 15 contracted the disease, some of who may have sadly died or, as our film shows, suffered life changing consequences.”