We
all remember the old saying about a single picture being worth
a thousand words, and everyone knows how powerful a tool to
inspire activism moving pictures can be: Cathy Come Home inspiring
the launch of Shelter and Michael Burke’s 1984 BBC TV
reports from the Ethiopian Famine being among the best-known
examples.
Charities also now have the option of using their websites
as a platform from which to stream arresting video content;
while technical advances mean filming, editing and streaming
films online are all no longer so difficult or expensive as
in the past. But film is still a relatively resource and cost-intensive
media, so how do you get the most out of it?
Unicef is one of the larger charities to have invested in
filmmaking. In 2004, More Precious Than Gold was made as part
of a campaign against child exploitation. Unicef worked with
Century Films on a three minute film based on a poem by Simon
Armitage that compared the trafficking of children to the
sale of fruit. The poem was read by Unicef ambassador Robbie
Williams.
As Unicef spokesperson Sarah Epstein explains, it was made
with online audiences in mind, but was also shown by independent
cinemas, and at music festivals and gigs. “We did it
to reach a new, younger audience, new potential donors and
campaigners, through a different mechanism from the usual
mailshots and news coverage,” says Epstein.
Unicef’s website now has a link to a new film, again
based on a Simon Armitage poem. The Gift, narrated by Gwyneth
Paltrow, is about the unwanted ‘gift’ of HIV passed
on by infected pregnant women to their children. It ends by
asking viewers to sign a petition to the Chancellor, asking
him to call on G8 leaders to provide funding that could ensure
every woman in the world has access to treatment.
The charity also conducted a two-week online campaign in late
February and early March using pop-up-type ads featuring celebrity
supporters including Claudia Schiffer, Roger Moore, James
Nesbitt and Jemima Khan to promote the film. Both films were
funded by technology provider Real Networks, using money allocated
specifically for film-making.
Like Unicef, Macmillan now has a library of films available
on its website. According to its head of communications Marc
Silverside, the first films were intended to be used primarily
for an internal audience, but their potential to inspire and
inform supporters was obvious.
“We thought we could use these with our supporters too,
because they show where their money goes,” says Silverside.
“If people appreciate what we do they’re more
inclined to support us.” This year Macmillan is planning
its first pure fundraising film, as part of a campaign to
increase legacy donations.
Problems and solutions
There have been no serious problems to overcome in getting
the films online, although a new server was required to stream
them when they first went onto the website in 2005. Instead,
the biggest issues have been connected to data protection,
copyright, and getting permission from the individuals featured
in the films to put those sections of the films online.
Water Aid’s multimedia officer, Beth Jepson, now in
her second year in post, was appointed as part of a strategy
that included purchasing camera equipment and edit suite technology
for in-house film production. Water Aid now produces a range
of video material aimed at different audiences, including
a set of ‘virals’ (advertisements) which it ran
on YouTube in 2007 to highlight the international sanitation
crisis.
Water Aid’s very short films each appear to show a traffic
warden, a businessman, a well-heeled shopper and a dog walker
crouching down to defecate in public. Some readers may feel
this sounds somewhat puerile, but they are intended to draw
attention to the fact that 40 per cent of the world’s
population do not have access to a toilet, and that thousands
die each year because of a lack of sanitation.
“[We] had been talking to journalists about the sanitation
issue for a long time without getting much coverage,”
says Jepson. “As soon as we put those virals online
we got a reaction; 61,000 people have watched those videos
now.”
Water Aid also worked with the London creative agency Bio
Media to produce an animated film for the End Water Poverty
website, The Stink Goes On, which highlights the fact that
150 years after London’s Great Stink forced Parliament
to authorise the building of adequate sewers, more than a
billion people in the developing world still have no access
to a clean water supply.
Top
A question of size
Visitors to the website of ARCOS (the Association for Rehabilitation
of Communication and Oral Skills) a small charity with ten
members of staff which provides services to people with
communication and eating difficulties, can see a short film
about its work produced for the charity by production company
Just Film.
ARCOS director Kay Coombes says that raising the funds to
make this, and an earlier film, were much more difficult
and time-consuming than the production process. As at Macmillan,
the biggest problem to overcome when putting the films online
was maintaining the confidentiality and privacy of the people
shown undergoing treatment.
“Many of the people who come to us for help, to donate,
or to volunteer do so because they’ve been browsing
the web and have come across the film,” she says.
Many smaller charities will still be concerned by the question
of cost, particularly as only a few could afford to invest
in in-house editing and production equipment. But there
are now a number of film production companies that specialise
in work for third sector organisations, while others will
work for charities at reduced rates or pro bono.
The Just Film rate card lists prices of £650 per day
or £2,500 per week for shooting the film and £500
per day or £2,000 per week for editing. Registered
charities get an automatic 20 per cent discount and there
is no VAT to pay. An 18 minute film like the one produced
for ARCOS cost the charity around £15,000. Shorter,
less complex films can be made for less: Silverside says
the average three to four minute video made for Macmillan
costs about £1,000 to £1,200.
For Coombes, the most important benefits of working with
Just Film were that the end result looks so professional,
and the approach taken by director Chris Pettit. “I’ve
talked to a few people [working for other charities] who
feel we were luckier than they’ve been,” she
says. “Chris spends time with you working out what
you want to do and will then come back to make sure you’re
happy. We are a very sophisticated society in this country
when it comes to images, so you’ve got to have something
that looks good.”
Yet there are also examples of small charities that benefit
from taking a DIY approach to film-making. Dee’s Abled
Children, which supports projects helping disabled children
and young adults in Sri Lanka, was only registered as a
charity last August. Its founder and chairperson, Daynore
Cameron, and her daughter Emma Armitage were so moved by
the plight of the victims of the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami
that they travelled to Sri Lanka to help the relief effort.
While there, they discovered the extent to which disabled
people and children are excluded from mainstream Sri Lankan
society, and decided they had to do something to help. “It
was such a life-changing experience that I came home, started
fundraising and wound up my therapy business,” Cameron
explains. (She had been a professional counsellor.)
Armitage had shot some footage on a camcorder while in Sri
Lanka, and it was decided that this should form the basis
of a short film about the charity’s work. They bought
some editing software from PC World, then Armitage set to
work teaching herself how to use the technology and edited
more than three and a half hours of film. After many weeks
of work she produced a 13 minute film. A DVD company then
produced multiple copies to send to funders and donors.
“It was a way of registering our work and promoting
it when we sent out applications for funding,” says
Cameron. “Then, when we developed the website we though
it would be a good idea to have it on there.” She
says the fact that it is obviously not a professionally
produced film has not been a problem. “A lot of people
have said the fact that it is homemade shows that this is
not a big organisation with lots of funds.” The charity
is making a new film to update the story of its progress
since 2005.
Larger charities looking to stream large quantities of films
from a website may wish to consider using a third party
company to host the films and provide the streaming service
from the website, as this prevents a large number of people
watching the video material slowing down the central website
server.
Water Aid takes this approach, with a third party company,
StreamCity, hosting the video streaming, and providing web-based
software which enables Water Aid to encode videos produced
in MPEG, AVI or DVD format and turn them into Flash format.
The videos are then presented to website visitors in a player
branded in the Water Aid house style.
“Usually it’s the best way to capture the essence
of Water Aid’s work, the most effective way of giving
local people a voice,” says Beth Jepson. “I
can talk about the numbers of people who don’t have
clean sanitation until I’m blue in the face, but if
I put a camera on those people themselves and let them tell
you then that’s much more effective.”
Top
To return to the April 08 features list click here
|
