Alan Walsh from HelpFilm explains how any charity can become an expert in storytelling, no matter what their limitations.
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“We’d like to make a film about our charity” is something we hear at HelpFilm every week.

Just to clarify, HelpFilm are a charitable production company that makes films/animations for other charities. We pay for everything so, as you can imagine, demand is fairly high. When going through applications, we look for a variety of things - every charity is different, every topic has its own difficulties. One of the biggest is whether or not the charity’s good work is ‘visual’. This is key, video is a ‘show, don’t tell’ medium. If we can’t show the good work being done, it’s hard to make a video!

Which brings me to one example in particular - Street Storage. They came to us about making a film, but there were some issues. Street Storage are a great charity that provide storage for people experiencing homelessness. You can put your documents/luggage for as long as needed. A wonderful idea. But, the conversation went something like this…

HelpFilm: “Ok, so what can we film?”
Street Storage: “Well, we have a storage facility in North London. It’s a room with racks of luggage”
HelpFilm: “That’s not very visual. We can speak to the people you’re helping, perhaps. That can be the hook”
Street Storage: “The people experiencing homeless don’t want to be on camera”

So how do you make a video about a room with some boxes in it? Well if you can’t speak to anyone and you can’t show anything then animation is pretty much your only option. We’ve used animation quite a bit in the past for charities that deal with vulnerable people that can’t be shown on camera. But, it takes a long time and it’s expensive (you’ll get 2, maybe even 3 films done for the price of 1 animation). Street Storage were delighted with the idea of an animation so we got scripting.

Animations, if not done right, can be cold and we needed heart. We decided to focus on the emotional journey a person who is experiencing homelessness must go through. Street Storage had some great quotes on that so that became the backbone of the script - one person's journey to needing Street Storage. Now to find an animator. We lucked out here because I’d just been dealing with a brilliant London based animator called Joe Bichard from Oh Studios. He has a simplistic, yet distinct style that could really work. He came on board and immediately got the brief.

A film is only as good as the client lets them be. Without exception, the films that have worked best are when the charity we’re helping has an open mind. Rachel Woolf from Street Storage was fantastic throughout. She said what the important elements were and then let us build the animation round it. Her ideas were excellent and it was one of those dream production processes where there’s no awkward emails or phone conversations.

As the animation was progressing we needed to find a voice. We sometimes use a wonderful celebrity booker called Paul Cullen to help us find celebrities that would be willing to help. Street Storage were clear they didn’t just want a celebrity voice for the sake of it. They wanted someone who had a link to their cause. Paul immediately mentioned Gail Porter. Gail is known to be very generous with her time and she had actually experienced homelessness herself. She was perfect, and she said yes! She came into the recording like a breath of fresh air and nailed the recording. Gails' delivery gave the animation style the heart and soul it needed.

So with the animation completed, we needed to get as many eyeballs on it as possible. Here our Comms manager Laura Balerdi worked with Street Storage on a strategy for social media. Key to this was Gail Porter retweeting it, which she kindly did. I didn’t need to be told, HelpFilms twitter feed starting lighting up. Then, the magic happened, Dara O’Briain retweeted it, then Caitlin Moran, Sara Cox, and Jay Raynar. In 3 hours we’d clocked up 35k views. The power of celebrity in full force.

The launch had gone beyond expectations, Street Storage had a massive boost in exposure and they also had a beautiful animation on their website to explain the wonderful work that they do.

As Rachel from Street Storage put it “Our strategy was to raise our public profile…The film has increased donations to our project and the video went semi-viral. It was retweeted by four celebrities with a combined following of 4m people and continues to build knowledge of who we are and what we do nationally.”

Therefore if thought about creatively, any charity, no matter what it is about can ‘show’ a powerful story.

To view the animation click here

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