The Health Foundation
CHALLENGE
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, The Health Foundation launched an inquiry into inequalities experienced by individuals across the UK. We were tasked with bringing these case studies to the world, drawing together their individual experiences, highlighting hardships and emphasising the need for change.
APPROACH
We met with three vulnerable people from around the UK. Travelling to Wales, Birmingham and London we provided a picture of the current struggles faced by ordinary people across the UK. We didn’t want to only look at the struggles. Together with the Health Foundation, we highlighted the vital work UK charities are doing to help people during this difficult time and also provided a platform for our case studies to be seen and to help voice their hopes for the future.
The shoots took place during the ongoing pandemic in line with filming safety procedures. Adapting to a skeleton crew of three allowed us to confidently scale down production while maintaining the gravity and intimacy of the stories we were helping to share.
Throughout this project, we worked alongside the very talented team at Graylings London. Graylings are a PR agency that specialises in driving communication through creative and unique insight. The team was fantastic in providing insight and generating new and fresh ideas.
The final video sits on the health foundations website, as context to the inquiry into health inequalities during the Covid-19 pandemic. This video will support the launch of the covid-19 impact enquiry. The aim is to support the inquiry by raising awareness of issues faced by real and vulnerable people around the UK. The video can also be found on the Health Foundation’s youtube. We believe that these videos will help drive change into an area in need of awareness and support in these challenging times.
CINEMATOGRAPHY BY SAM HAYES-WATKINS
“We wanted to create a cinematic piece that focused on sensitive stories and contrasting locations.
We kept the shot list very similar for each shoot in order to bring all three narratives together into a single edit. As well as the main film we had to create a 60 second social cut for each story, so we wanted them to feel like they belonged in the same series.
Shooting the same ‘hero’ shot of each of the participants really brought the films together nicely.
Due to the emotive nature of the project, we opted for slow-motion throughout to really drive focus to the people involved.”
Behind the Lens: Beavertown Creative Space
CHALLENGE
Beavertown approached us to document their campaign to decorate London pubs with bespoke Beavertown illustration, adding a splash of colour and celebrating the British pub as a central space of culture and connection among people.
APPROACH
We brought animator Jared on early in concepting to integrate the animation into our shooting plan.
Then, we assembled two shooting crews, each armed with a Canon C200 kit and time-lapse cameras to capture scheduled graffiti sessions throughout the weekend.
One of the main challenges was to create an atmosphere that reflected the individual pubs in their normal state. COVID-19 meant that restrictions were in place, attendance was down, social distancing was enforced (and the rain all weekend didn’t help!) so creating something upbeat and positive was on the mind of everyone involved.
As well as capturing the graffiti process of the artists working on the murals, we wanted to speak to locals about the significance of the pub to them, keeping everything loose and casual to reiterate the spirit of pubgoers. To lift the series, we infused each film with tailored Beavertown animation using Nick Dwyer’s iconic illustrations.
Our interview with Nick only required a skeleton crew, who served to bring all the films together with his creative process and introduce the world of illustration to the story.
DIRECTED BY DAVID LIEB
“The approach to all things Beavertown is to try and bring the brands unique personality through in the films. When filming with Nick Dwyer we wanted to ensure the film matched and complimented his character and that of his designs. To do this we wanted to create a visual outpouring of Nick’s mind onto the screen; full of the vibrant colours and charming characters that have become synonymous with the Beavertown identity.”
ANIMATION BY JARED TOMKINS
“I had the pleasure of joining Habitual Media as a creative partner to bring life into Beavertown’s Creative Space series by animating some of their characters and other assets from their iconic branding and integrating it into live-action scenes. The process for this project involved layering the illustrations in a suitable way for importing into After Effects, rigging the characters, animating the characters and other assets, tracking cameras, and compositing the animated content into live-action scenes. The most complicated and time-consuming part of this project was layering and rigging the Beavertown characters. It was quite a challenge as there is a lot of detail in Nick Dwyer’s illustrations. I used Duik to rig any limbs and coded a number of expressions and sliders to add in those extra details. The team at Habitual carried out a great job with filming some great shots and placing the camera in clever places to allow the animation to be integrated smoothly into the scenes. A lot of the scenes involved tracking the camera in 3D space and then placing the elements in Z space with shadows, lighting, and focal blurring to create realism and give as much depth as possible.”
PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAMES STARKEY
“In my work I always strive for honest photographic storytelling. Whilst working behind the scenes on the Beavertown Campaign, I felt that it was important to not only document the character of Nick Dwyer but also to capture his distinctive illustrative characters, the process of their creation and how they were brought to life in his vivid murals.”
