Yahoo News Mousetrap PSA Nails Importance Of Social Distancing In The Snappiest Way
It’s one snappy way to highlight the importance of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic: The Ohio Department of Health on Thursday released a simple, yet stunningly effective, PSA featuring dozens of ping-pong balls and mousetraps.
Check out the video ― which gained more than 5.8 million views in its first 20 hours on Twitter ― here:
Social distancing works. We are all #InThisTogetherOhio. https://t.co/jU4ZAkm3Py pic.twitter.com/uKJtfi4cuP
— Ohio Dept of Health (@OHdeptofhealth) April 9, 2020
“I don’t usually get stressed over work,” said Andy Nick, from the Dayton, Ohio, creative agency Real Art that produced the video.
“But in this case, when you have 400 traps set 1/4” apart, and you have to put that ping-pong ball on the last 100 without letting a single one go off... yeah, that’s pure stress,” he wrote in an email to HuffPost on Friday.
Nick said his team had four days to come up with the PSA’s concept and complete the project. They spent two days getting ready ― including finding 500 mousetraps and 500 pingpong balls ― and another two days shooting on set.
One accidental chain reaction “cost us a lot of time,” Nick said.
A lot of people have been asking how we did the @OHdeptofhealth video (aka - the Mouse Trap project). Here's an iPhone clip of our first "shot", which took 8 hours to set up. pic.twitter.com/3xxjiiz2N5
— Andy Nick (@nickAD) April 9, 2020
Nick said the video wasn’t like anything he had ever worked on before.
“The pandemic isn’t just another ‘project,’” he wrote. “This [is] a piece with some gravity behind it. Of all the work our team has done lately, I’m glad this one means something to people.”
Here's some behind the scenes... I knew it was impossible to make the perfect throw in a single take. With only 1 hr left in the shoot (no room to start a chain reaction & reset), we used gel superglue to "freeze" the traps. And then... I threw the perfect throw in 1 take. :)
— Andy Nick (@nickAD) April 9, 2020
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