Title	THE BOY WHO COULDN'T SEE THE STARS
Brand	NOVARTIS LUXTURNA
Product/Service	RETINAL DYSTROPHY AWARENESS
Category	E03. Disease Awareness & Understanding
Entrant	ELAN EDELMAN Paris, FRANCE
Idea Creation	ELAN EDELMAN Paris, FRANCE
PR	ELAN EDELMAN Paris, FRANCE
Production	PASSION Paris, FRANCE

Name	Company	Position
Marc Horgues	Edelman France	Creative Director
Roxane Philippe	Edelman France	SVP and Head of Health
Adrien Susini	Edelman France	Digital Associate Director
Marion Dumas	Edelman France	Senior Account Manager

Describe any restrictions or regulations regarding Healthcare/RX/Pharma communications in your country/region including:

There were no legal restrictions, however, we needed to be very accurate in portraying the IRD symptoms, as we couldn’t promote any design that might potentially lead to diagnosis errors.

Describe the target audience and why your work is relevant to them.

In France, Inherited Retinal Dystrophy affects about 30,000 people. Our target audience for this campaign was young adults in France, from 15 to 25 years old because most of the people suffering from this disease aren’t diagnosed soon enough (in young adulthood) to be able to access potential treatment.

Write a short summary of what happens in the film

What would happen if one day you couldn’t see the stars anymore? How would you behave if growing up your vision started to blur inexplicably? What would you feel if your vision began to narrow, driving your life into a dark tunnel? Would you understand what was happening to you? Would you talk about it and ask for help? Here is the story of a boy growing up with a very rare form of Inherited Retinal Dystrophy. This degenerative disease starts early in a patient’s life with small symptoms such as difficulty seeing in the dark. It grows stronger year after year with unexplained new symptoms such as blurred or tunnel vision and loss of color vision. And ultimately it leads to blindness… unless those symptoms are diagnosed early enough by a specialist who may be able to treat the disease with a new form of genetic therapy.

Tell the jury about type(s) of animation or visual effects and summarise any relevant challenges or techniques.

We created the film from a first-person perspective, incorporating a strong visual identity and a “music video style”. It tells the story of a young boy’s life and the symptoms he faces (including difficulty seeing in the dark, blurred or tunnel vision), which are expressed by drawings that evolve during the film. Our directors have experience in creating animated video clips, and their touch - mixing traditional animation techniques with a modern twist - helped to achieve this goal. The movie’s subjective point of view allows every viewer to “experience” the symptoms, yet still communicate who the main character is and how he is growing up, thanks to the subtle reflections we see of his face. The drawing’s evolution and the rhythm had to express the emotions a patient might feel, thus raising awareness about the issues they face.