As storytellers we often turn to nice imagery and emotional stories to move our audience to action. Conservation International flipped the script, harnessing voice, anger, and anthropomorphization to stunning effect. Claire Ratinon, our Creative Producer, investigates.
Conservation International recently launched a campaign called ‘Nature Is Speaking,’ which imagines what the great forces of nature like the coral reef, the rainforest, and even Mother Nature herself would say if they could speak to us, the humans who rely on them for survival.
Partnering with famous faces (actually, voices) including Harrison Ford as The Ocean, Penelope Cruz as Water, Kevin Spacey as The Rainforest, and Julia Roberts as Mother Nature, this unconventional environmental series has given otherwise voiceless natural entities the capacity to communicate in a compelling and often startling way.
Through this unique approach to storytelling, this campaign encourages a new kind of dialogue between the audience and the natural environment and as story tellers and social innovators, we can learn a lot from their series of films.
Not only those with voices have stories to tell
Unlike other conservation campaigns that rely heavily on incendiary log lines and shocking images, ‘Nature Is Speaking’ allows nature to break its silence and speak to us directly.
By creating an emotional connection and understanding between the audience and the soil, the redwood, the flower, this series of short films makes clear the unquestionable symbiosis of the human race and the natural environment. It emphasizes our duty of care as well as the dire implications of ignoring the damage that our choices and actions can cause.
Not every issue has a face we can empathize with or a story that brings a tear to our eyes, yet through anthropomorphizing the natural world and giving it a chance to be heard, this series makes it near impossible to deny the effect we humans are having on the planet.
Want to inspire your audience to act? Sometimes that means a kick in the pants
For me, communication about the environment and conservation is a tricky space to navigate. Most documentaries or films about the many ways that humans exploit the planet, its plants, and its creatures strike me as exhausting or overwhelmingly negative.
Instead of utilizing devastating imagery or trite rhetoric to shame its audience, these films snap us into paying attention. This beautiful series doesn’t pull any punches. It doesn’t mince its words or sugar coat the issues. In fact, it is both breathtaking and, in moments, downright frightening.
In each of these videos, you are left unable to question the power of each of these elements of nature, and the simple fact that they are indifferent to whether humans survive or not. The rainforest laughs at our arrogance and the ocean scoffs at our self-importance – and the feeling you’re left with is an inability to ignore what they all have to say.
Instead of guilting its audience into making a change, these films speak starkly and simply to the truth. Without meaningful action on the environment, it’s humankind that is doomed.
The mountain may be high, but each step still counts
The challenges that face the planet – and therefore us as humans – are varied, numerous, and above all complex. Taking it all in can be overwhelming and discouraging as we ask, can I really make a difference? The ‘Nature Is Speaking’ campaign call-to-action is a well thought out and effective one as it actually asks for very little.
Armed with the belief that even the smallest change is meaningful, this campaign asks its supporters ‘How will you listen to nature?’. By empowering their audience to make only a small difference, this campaign has the potential to avalanche people’s behavior to bigger, even more meaningful action.
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This innovative approach to creating and constructing narratives really captured my imagination. After hearing what Mother Nature had to say, I found myself compelled to pay attention and to care. I felt responsible and empowered to do something myself.
With a series like this one, the importance of conservation efforts stops being a distant issue for someone else to figure out and becomes a global challenge that faces us all, that we can – and should – do something about.
And that is our aim as storytellers. To bring the audience face to face with a narrative in such a compelling way that they, after watching, are inspired to act.
Claire Ratinon - Creative Producer
Claire Ratinon is a documentary producer from London. Stepping away from a career producing prime-time content for the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, she moved to New York in 2010. In the US, she focused on producing independent documentaries, crowdfunding projects, producing docu-style videos for corporate clients, live event coverage and developing an after-school program with the nonprofit, Old School Films. She recently relocated back to London where she continues to work in production as well as indulging her passion for beekeeping and urban gardening.