Bad Host: Hunting The Couchsurfing Predator
Bad Host: Hunting the Couchsurfing Predator is the story of how a group of remarkable young women, unbeknownst to each other, were all victims of a predator who lured them to stay with him using Couchsurfing, a website where travellers can find trustworthy hosts to put them up in their homes for free. Tracing each other through the internet, the young women united and battled for 6 years, often in the face of indifference in their home countries, to bring him to justice.
Callum ‘Reilly – Senior Designer at Jump:
“We were tasked with recreating an early 2000’s styled private Facebook group, which showcased posts, messages and comments. We also recreated a look for the couchsurfing website which showed reviews, sign-up forms, profiles and homepages.
Among the web recreations, we animated newspaper headline graphics, emails, text messages and a few desktop computer simulations. The aim was to immerse the viewer into how the victims communicated with each other online. They were from all over the world and used Facebook as a base to shed light on their horrific experiences.”
Bad Host: Hunting the Couchsurfing Predator is a three-part documentary series produced by Lightbox in association with Scripps for Sky Documentaries.