Hopefully, we will all age. This is something that we all share, which means that we are all potentially going to be affected by ageism at some point. This is what Ageing Better are looking to change. Ageing Better were publishing a report on ageism in recruitment, and we worked with them to create 6 films to sit alongside it. Data and research can sometimes be hard to connect with. To help with that the films would feature real stories from people who have experienced ageism in recruitment and show the audience the impact it can have. They were there to connect the audience with people they’ve never met before and show the various impacts this discrimination can have. The hope was that by doing this not only could awareness be raised, but we could go some way to changing the practices of recruiters who discriminate based on age.
Check out the report hereThis project was all about people, which meant that it was exactly the kind of project that we like to take on. Because it was so people centric, we wanted to be as involved as we possibly could be to make sure that we could tell the best possible stories. This began with conducting pre-interviews. As well as finding out more about our storytellers and their experiences, it gave us a chance to meet them. We were able to find out more about them and form some kind of bond that extended beyond their experiences of ageism. Once we knew our storytellers a little better, we were in a good position to start conducting interviews. In total we conducted 5 of them, travelling across the country in the process. These were long interviews, full of insight, experience and personal stories. The storytellers gave us so much to work with, which meant that we went into the edits with a bit of a challenge. How could we meet the brief whilst keeping the films to time? And how could we make sure that the storytellers experiences were given the right amount of time to make an impact? The edits were a labour of love and we poured a lot of energy into creating films that would impact the audience.
Story development
Pre-interviews
Scheduling
5 days of filming
Sound recording
Editing
Music licensing
The film is a bold way of showing people the impact small charities have, and asking if they can support them. It’s not about making people feel guilty or going too hard on them, it’s a celebration of what small charities do. The idea was to create something exciting and making people feel so positive about their local small charities that they feel compelled to give if they can.