Reprieve, the legal action charity founded by Clive Stafford Smith, helps prisoners who are facing execution, particularly those who are outside the reach of the law because of the 'war on terror', including those incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay. This Is Real Art has been working with them in order to raise awareness, making this short film among other things...

The film was made entirely in-house at This Is Real Art using a 1970s police photofit identity kit. Massive Attack have been longtime supporters of Reprieve's work, using their current tour to promote the organisation and also designating it as the charity partner for this year's Meltdown festival, which Massive Attack curated. The band donated the soundtrack for this film and also ran it at the Meltdown festival.

Creative: Paul Belford
Animation: Animation: Chris Perry
Production: This is Real Art
Music: Massive Attack

TiRA has also just rebranded Reprieve. The stamp logo (above) comes, says TiRA's creative director Paul Belford, "from the fact that a reprieve requires an official stamp of approval. The new visual identity is all based on the look of official forms - a reference to the kind of government bureaucracy that Reprieve lawyers have to deal with."

Accompanying print ads (one shown above) are, says Belford, "desperately unfashionable long copy ads. It's the best way to communicate all the information. And there's nothing wrong with long copy if you have a lot of interesting things to say. But the art direction idea allows all the copy to be broken up into easily accessible pieces."

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"Censoring the images in these ads creates intrigue," says Belford. "Also we didn't want to be accused of sensationalism by trying to show shocking images big. And of course no media owner would allow them to be shown anyway. It's arguably more powerful to say these images are so horrific that we cannot show them, and then leave it to the reader's imagination. We wanted the ads to talk about something that is shocking but in a credible, intelligent way."

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