The Project

Some of our favourite–and most rewarding–videos that we create are those for charities. A few weeks ago, we wrapped up a project with the UK Charity Youngminds. YoungMinds is a charity that strives to increase mental health in children and young adults. Their mission is to support and empower youth, and ensure the best possible mental health support is available to all that need it.

YoungMinds is a charity that is hugely reliant on Fundraising events, and we knew we could do a great job creating a fundraising video for them. We took the time to develop an ambitious concept that would fit the clients’ brief. YoungMinds had an amazing opportunity to air a promotional video at the Sidemen Football Club versus YouTube Allstars Charity Match 2018. This match would not only have an attendance of 27,000 people, but it would also be live-streamed worldwide on YouTube. We wrote a script that would reflect the setting of the video premiere.

Not only do we place great value in taking on charity projects, we also look for ways we can invest in young filmmakers. One of our in-house directors, Ben Wilkinson, took the lead on this video. Ben is a recent graduate of Ravensbourne University. His vision led the development of the project, from scripting and storyboarding through to the final edit.

The Process

Due to the nature of the project, we invested a lot of internal time to finding the right locations for a reduced price. We were lucky to have filmed at two amazing locations, New River Sport and Fitness, and the Lee Valley Athletics Centre. The combination of these two locations allowed us to have the background we needed to compliment the narrative.

We had the privilege of working with one of the people YoungMinds has helped–our talent, Alex. Alex was an incredible asset on this project, dedicating his time to record the voice-over we needed, and of course attend the shoots.

We filmed this video in one long day, traveling between two sets. Because we were in a time crunch (we had about 3 weeks to deliver the video from the time of enquiry), we utilized a larger crew in order to save time on set–we had a director, producer, DOP, camera assistant, and production assistant. Our primary camera was the Sony FS7 with stunning Zeiss Super Speed Prime Lenses for crisp and shallow focus to emphasis the internal dialogue. We also used a second camera to capture ‘safety’ footage.

We had five days to complete post-production due to the impending air-date of the video. We had prepared a storyboard based off our pitch idea to the client to speed up this process. We were also able to split up post between three people: an editor, a sound designer, and a colourist. This enabled things to happen three times quicker than if we only had a single person working on it. We implemented some post-production tricks, such as the ‘glitch’ effect, along with a custom-designed sound effect panel. We finished with a subtle colour grade that accentuated Alex’s character arc from down-on-himself to confident.

The Results

Our video was aired at the charity football match and livestreamed to YouTube on June 2nd. The fundraising campaign went on to receive 5.2 million views on YouTube, and helped YoungMinds to raise 147% of their fundraising goal. This amounted to around £74,000.

The fundraising campaign went on to receive 5.2 million views on YouTube, and helped YoungMinds to raise 147% of their fundraising goal. This amounted to around £74,000.

We are incredibly proud with how much our video contributed to this campaign.

You are welcome to contribute to the YoungMinds charity here.

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