A Toronto campaign promoting this Friday’s release of Elevation Pictures’ Snowden is getting literal about the subject matter, following people walking through Yonge-Dundas Square and projecting the footage onto a live video billboard.

With media from Dentsu Aegis, creative from DenstuBos and the OOH from Cieslok, the execution is part of a national campaign promoting the Oliver Stone docudrama, which is based on the books The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man, by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus, by Anatoly Kucherena.

Jon Freir, executive CD, DentsuBos, told MiC the aim of the live footage execution is to give visitors to Yonge-Dundas Square a taste of the surveillance and privacy issues that are tackled in the movie.

The live billboard footage begins with a short trailer for Snowden and then cuts to a wide overhead shot of Yonge-Dundas Square before zooming in and briefly following people walking through the area before zooming out again.

Freir said his team has had people on site directing people towards the live video footage, but for the most part they want them to discover it for themselves.

The activation will be live until Sept. 18.