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.”