For this project we were approached by Youth Leaderships Camps of Canada to produce a full length educational documentary that would be shown to students across Canada. Their goal was to encourage conversation within schools about bullying, how the students can help or reach out for help and how real people just like them chose to rise above the situations they were faced with.

The creative approach that we developed for YLCC was to film bullying speakers in documentary style format, so that the students watching it would respond well to its modern and emotional feel. Students watch a lot of cheesy bullying videos and we wanted to cut through that noise and deliver the positive message of this film to them in
a mature and memorable way.

A large part of the challenge of this piece was the time and distance between each interview. Filmed in several different locations in Canada and over several months it was necessary that the interviews all looked coherent so that the final film would look like a unified piece. We chose interview style for the content so each speaker would
be sharing a relatable story in an intimate way. We let our interviewees share their stories in a vulnerable and honest way so the students watching would be able to relate to the content rather than feeling ‘preached to’. The target age range was students in grades 6 - 12, the social issue at the heart of the video message was an anti-bullying piece that didn’t criminalize the bullies or victimize those being bullied, but showed how students can make a choice to rise above and make change in their own lives and schools. This particular piece was nearly impossible to storyboard ahead of time as we began the filming process before we could secure all of our interview subjects. It was up to our team to approach each interview with a creative eye to capture the best possible b-roll to fit the theme of the documentary and to use the locations provided to film a beautiful interview that would correspond with all the other interviews in a cohesive way. For this documentary we filmed only in English as it was to distributed to the English speaking market across North  America.

We filmed using natural light supplemented by led lighting which we made to look like natural window light for the interviews. In this way we wanted to make the interviews look as real and authentic as possible while still being beautifully composed and lit, we wanted to capture that feeling that the students watching were sitting down with a friend or someone they knew and having a heart to heart chat. We supplemented our interview footage with b-roll where available of our interview subjects’ environments. For this particular segment we filmed spaces in empty schools in a dramatic and low light way to emphasizes the feeling of melancholy that the story being told in the interview emotes. Towards the second half of the film the tone shifts and we enter the moments in our film that are full of hope and triumph. To reinforce those feelings the b-roll changes to beautiful sweeping aerials and brightly coloured footage that gives a feeling of hope and happiness.

Our team developed the 2-D graphics used throughout the film as lower thirds and titles to introduce each section of the film.

The soundtrack was specially chosen to add drama and a sense of reflection to the piece. We chose mellow beautiful instrumental songs that were subtle enough to not distract from the interviews, but rather emphasized the emotion of the stories being told. In the retelling of tough situations these interviews are supported by melancholy songs, however near the end of the film where the stories turn positive and hopeful the music supports this

by adding a hopeful and uplifting feeling.

We approached each interview with a loose script because we wanted each story to unfold naturally. However we did have a master plan of topics we wanted addressed, and questions we wanted answered by each participant so that the film would have a coherency of structure and story. To reinforce the authentic and natural feel we decided the editing style should be a very traditional documentary one, with lots of “breathing room” left on the screen. Slow cuts and long shots that linger let the viewers really
settle in and feel calm as they watch the piece. We let the interview footage run as intact as possible and kept our cuts to a minimum so that the viewer would experience the feeling of being in the same room as our subjects. We wanted to give the students watching the sense that this was a conversation that was happening with them. We
wanted the students to feel they were being communicated with and shared with, to include them in the process of hearing these stories and be inspired by them to realize how they too could rise above.