How to make circles appear "tied together"

[sandrac12345]

Hi all, I'm working on a Theater piece for a friend of mine, and weight loss is the main part. I want the 2 lead actors to appear "tied together" by the measuring tape. Making it look like the tape is tight around the circles, and in the middle where the circles touch also have some effect of them pushing into each other. I hope this makes sense. I attached a pic as I have it right now. Kinda stumped on how I achieve this, or if PS is even the right software. Maybe AI would be better? Thanks for any and all help! Much appreciated.

(Note: the images are not final, so it needs to just be the holding shape that has treatment, so I can swap out images once we get the final ones.)

-Sandra

[KShinabery212]

The other thing you could do is also photograph the tape measure around something and against a white background.  As that would look more real than the graphic version you have.  You could play with tightness.  You could then photograph the ends of the tape measure separately and then warp them.  Again this would give them a more realistic look.