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British Liver Trust – Case Study

Compassionate Filmmaking

We have always loved making films with our charity clients. We understand and admire the work that these organisations do and we are absolutely love getting to work with them. A key part of working with charities like British Liver Trust is filming with real people some of whom are dealing with incredibly difficult or sensitive situations. We believe strongly in ensuring our processes in these situations follow the approach of compassionate filmmaking. Crucial to this is understanding that how the film gets made is just as important as the end film. It can vary what this means depending on the situation. For example, working with young people means we engage with their interest, let them hold a camera or ask questions about what we do. For people who may have experienced tragedy or trauma it’s knowing when to film and when to stop. We build relationships with all our clients but especially with our third sector clients because we know how important the relationships they have with the people we have the privilege of filming with.

Service Highlights

  • Pre-production planning – on projects like this it’s important we know and understand the people we’ll be filming with. We work with work with British Liver Trust meeting with each of the case studies before filming.
  • Story-telling – We felt responsible for ensuring we told the stories that that they wanted to tell and matching that with the goals of the video. This is where the process becomes just as important as the outcome. People’s lives are more important than any film. Knowing that when working with terminally ill people is crucial to how we work.
  • Filming in people’s houses – Everyone knows not to invite a film crew into your house willingly. Knowing this means our crews are always respectful of the homes we enter.
  • Limited filming options – Often when filming with real people it’s difficult to get the time you need. In these case studies we were limited in the time we had due to COVID and the health of the participants. Getting supporting footage was always going to be difficult. But knowing this allowed us to warn each person before we filmed what we wanted to accomplish.
  • Filming across the UK – Our work with the Trust has taken across the UK filming with people from all walks of life. We are based in Wales but able to film all over the United Kingdom and Europe.

Testimonial

“Like an Egg have been fantastic to work with from the beginning to the end. They dealt seamlessly with all the practicalities of filming in lockdown. And, most importantly for a health charity like us, were great at working with our case studies who all have a serious liver condition. They were sensitive, human and professional at all times – and I received lovely feedback from our case studies themselves on how much they enjoyed the filming day and meeting the Like an Egg team. Finally, the finished videos are just what we wanted and have been really well received by the whole charity from the CEO on down – they will really help us push forward awareness of liver disease and liver cancer.”

Macmillan Cancer Support

Inspirational Video Content

Making inspirational video content requires an inspirational person with an inspirational story. But finding people who can be that person and tell that story on camera is very rare. It’s why we feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with the very inspiring Bami on her message to people from ethnically diverse backgrounds around getting their breasts checked. This project with Macmillan required us to focus on delivering a very clear message in a way that would enact an action or reaction from the audience, namely to get your breasts checked. Achieving change in an audience can be hard but when you have someone who can delivery a message with so much power and passion our job is made so much easier.

Bami is a voice that demands attention all we needed to do was make sure it was heard. Films like this require a setting and environment that is relaxing and encouraging. This is done through our attitude and attention to detail. The process becomes just as important as the end product. Editing down an hour long interviews into under 3 minutes takes time but over the years we have developed an approach that enables us to build engaging and powerful narratives resulting in films like this.

Getting content like this relies on a few factors that can be difficult to achieve but when you find that person that can engage and capture an audience delivering authentic and impactful content it is magical.

Service Highlights

  • Working with strong personalities – when you film with people that have a strong voice and personality our role is to make sure we capture that on camera.
  • Natural and focused interviews -films like this need authenticity at their heart. The interviews need to be natural and not feel forced but they have to be focused on getting across the key messages in a clear and succinct manner.
  • Powerful imagery -getting really relevant footage to this story was difficult. This wasn’t an instructional video on how to check your breasts but a call to action. With this we focused the story on Bami and her experience. This meant taking her to film at one of her favourite locations, Rhossili, Gower and using her own photos.
  • Branding – Macmillan have clear brand guidelines. Being able to work with a brand to ensure the content we are creating matches their other work is key. This can be as simple as the graphics used or more detailed like how a shot is framed and how the video is picture graded.