Documentaries on evictions & sustainable communities

Travelling around the world to create an digital campaign on building more inclusive cities, in particular in slums, is a dream project for almost anyone. This was a perfect example of synergy between what we love doing and what a client wants.

We were behind the original creative brief submitted to join a consortium of NGOs and we contributed heavily to the application sent to the European Union's DEAR programme.

They needed a new type of educational campaign that would make the most of the newest technologies (e.g. 360 and interactive video) as well as a whole variety of formats to reach audiences everywhere: from podcasts to long-form storytelling. To find out more about the project, head to www.citiesforall.org.uk.

Our initial target was to reach 450,000 over three years. We smashed it after only 12 months and thanks to a generous cinema deal we managed to secure, it went up to 6,5 million by the end of year two. The campaign included:

• Social media marketing (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn & YouTube)
• Social media advertising: Facebook, Instagram & YouTube
• 30+ Blog posts
• 40+ videos - from very short to medium length (30 seconds to 15 minutes)
• 1 cinema advert, distributed UK-wide for 3 months
• Interactive videos, podcasts and more
• Reach: +6.5 million people over 2 years

The below are some examples of outputs from the campaign.

Animated videos

In a cross-over with an academic project, we decided to produce a series of "whiteboard animations". Where 99% of what you find on the web is actually drawn on a graphic tablet, with a hand filmed on a green screen added afterwards, we went full on organic.

Making the most of 4K cameras with a delivery in HD, we film the entire drawing process. For the simplest video, like the one below, it took 1.5 hours, while the most complex one totalled nearly 4 hours! Almost some kind of performance art...

Interactive documentaries

This was our first little attempt at an interactive documentary, nothing too fancy but a nice global view of the problem. Next time, aiming for 360 and interactive at the same time.

... And good old fashioned (web) documentaries

We're working on our first "big" one, where we mix a bit of the YouTube filmmaking techniques with a more traditional style. The reason behind that is not only to spice up the end result but also to appeal to younger audiences and introduce a series of NGO-produced films with more personality.

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We also created two dozen 2-3min and 60 second clips like this one to further support the creative campaign on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram):

Other than that we also produced a whole lot more content in written format, which you can find here www.citiesforall.org.uk