TBWA London and Harry Nash have teamed up to create "Firing Squad," a grim PSA drawing attention to the plight of artists living under totalitarian regimes.

Working from an idea conceived by group creative head Frazer Jelleyman and copywriter Alasdair, director Caswell Coggins of Harry Nash music video division Battlecruiser directed the 60-second spot.

The spot opens in a bleak industrial space with two soldiers manhandling and beating an already worked-over man. After more physical punishment, he is dragged outside where a smoking commandant and more soldiers slide clips into their AK-47's and prepare to execute the man, who we are informed represents any number of artists punished by dictator states for their attempts at free expression. Before he is shot, we see that rather than being offered the traditional blindfold, the artist sports a symbolic gag.

"He's kind of an artist every man. The film culminates with a rug pull, the gag, that is a quick and graphic way to represent what's going on," says Jelleyman. "It's a powerful piece with a simple message. In order for things to feel real, you can't stage them. It kind of has to have an observed quality."

Coggins and Harry Nash executive producer Kate Elson pitched the idea for the spot to TBWA after Coggins learned of the charity through his father, who's human rights work led him into contact with Artists in Exile.

""The thought that in this day and age, people can get roughed up, jailed or killed because they painted a picture or wrote an article, I find alien," says Jelleyman.

The spot was filmed at an abandoned factory in London's dock lands.

"We wanted it to look like a location in these kind of countries where people would be taken to be shot, a lonely space no one would come across," says Coggins. "My dad brought Marta from Artists in Exile and drove down to the shoot; we were shooting on the blindside so all she saw was the soldiers and the guy getting dragged out; she had to stop the car."

Although the original plan was to use an exiled actor from the group, ultimately none of these artists relished the idea of reliving their own experiences.

"I started with the casting by writing a little background of who the actor was and where he came from. I think I called him Pavel and he was a poet with a daughter and a son who was dragged off the street two months previously, just a little story I created," explains Coggins. "Then the actors read this while I put a camera on them for three minutes and told them this is the last three minutes of their lives. Some didn't know what to do. The guy we cast [Stephen Scott] slumped down on the floor and was really intense. His face also had a lot of story photographically."

DP Alwin Kushler lit and shot the piece while Sam Brown produced for Harry Nash. Tarrick of VTR graded the spot.

Webfiles:

http://www.harrynash.co.uk
http://www.tbwa.co.uk