Corporate - Save Ralph : Discover the Featurette

By Mulder, 07 may 2021

Hollywood filmmakers and movie stars have joined forces with Humane Society International (HSI) to produce a powerful stop-motion animated short film, Save Ralph, calling for an end to cosmetic testing on animals around the world. Although banned in 40 countries, the practice is still perfectly legal in most of the world, and even making a comeback in some regions, subjecting untold thousands of animals to needless suffering and death.

Taika Waititi, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron, Olivia Munn, Pom Klementieff, Tricia Helfer and others have come together to help HSI change that by providing the voices for the Save Ralph film, which aims to shine a light on the suffering animals endure, and engage consumers and policy makers in HSI’s mission to ban it. Writer and director Spencer Susser (Hesher, The Greatest Showman) and producer Jeff Vespa (Voices of Parkland) teamed up with the Arch Model studio of puppet maker supreme Andy Gent on the production to bring Ralph to life. The film is also being launched in Portuguese, Spanish, French and Vietnamese with Rodrigo Santoro, Denis Villeneuve, Rosario Dawson and others voicing the characters in those languages, and Maggie Q providing a video message of support.

Wanted to share a behind-the-scenes featurette, featuring never-before-seen footage of the short film’s voice stars including Taika Waititi, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron, Olivia Munn. The featurette showcases the intricacies of bringing the powerful stop-motion animated short film Save Ralph to life, as told by writer/director Spencer Susser (Hesher, The Greatest Showman) and frequent Wes Anderson/Tim Burton set designer and puppet maker Andy Gent (Fantastic Mr. Fox, Isle of Dogs, The French Dispatch, The Corpse Bride).

Production took place over the course of 50 days. The team filmed 4 seconds per day with 24 frames per second. It took four months to create Ralph the puppet, including five weeks to cover him with all of his (synthetic) fur – and Ralph is only nine inches tall! Each set room took six to eight weeks to build.

The short has gone viral with more than 140 million views online The short has especially taken off on TikTok with over 500 million #SaveRalph views - posts, challenges and petition drives. The short has led to over four million petition signatures globally. Policy makers around the world are beginning to take notice, and the HSI legislative team is working hard to ensure that Ralph’s message reaches the corridors of power. Already, the Mexico bill to ban cosmetic testing on animals passed the Chamber of Deputies by a landslide vote of 442 to 1! There’s just one more step to go to make Mexico the first country in North America to pass a cosmetics animal testing ban, which is final endorsement by the Senate.

The campaign is focused on 16 countries including Brazil, Canada, Chile, Mexico, South Africa, and 10 Southeast Asian nations, with partner organizations, the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society Legislative Fund, focused on legislation in the U.S. HSI is also standing up for bans that are already in place, like in Europe where authorities are attempting to exploit a legal loophole by demanding new animal testing of cosmetic ingredients under chemical law. #SaveRalph will shine a spotlight on all these countries, driving them toward the cruelty-free future that the public and consumers expect.

Follow HSI on Twitter @HSIGlobal, Facebook and Instagram.