The brief
A universal story for a changing world
Humanities conjures images of certain types of study and research, so much so that sometimes we lose sight of the scale encompassed within them. The real meaning is contained within the word though; human. Humanities is the study of our cultures, our history, our creativity, but it’s also a way of exploring our role in this ever changing world. One thing it isn’t though is an impractical academic nice-to-have. Studies around arts and humanities have tangible results, often contributing to solutions to some of our planet’s most pressing challenges.
This is the idea that the Southampton Institute of Arts and Humanities (SIAH) wanted us to capture in a film. The message had to be clear; that humanities studies make a real difference in the world. Colleagues and people from outside of the university had to come away from the film with a new understanding of what these studies achieve in the hope that they are given the appreciation they deserve.
What we did
We were really excited when this brief came our way. Not only are the vast majority of the team humanities graduates, we’re also firm believers in what the subject can do for the world. Being given free reign to be creative was also something that appealed to us. When we were talking internally about the film we headed in lots of different directions. However, we were most drawn to some of the more emotive documentary films that we found. These trod the line between being factual but impactful without feeling overly contrived. We knew that we would have limited opportunities to capture b-roll from our initial conversations with the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities. This made the documentary style approach even more appealing for the project as it can be built out mostly around interviews.
The most important thing that we needed to do very quickly was get a better understanding of SIAH and humanities more broadly. If we’re supposed to be helping people to understand the importance of these two things on a global scale then we needed to be as educated as possible. This meant having detailed conversations with the team at SIAH and not being afraid to ask questions and change directions. This happened too, and the brief and direction of the film changed a few times to ensure that the right story was being told. We love this kind of challenge and dedication to telling the right story and it’s always great to be working with people who feel the same.
Concision was going to be essential for this film, which is no easy task when you’re dealing with such a huge topic. We felt it was essential to put a story plan in place early on. This way we could avoid topics that muddied the message so that we could focus only on the impact that studies in the arts and humanities have on the world. The backbone of this film was going to be made up of interviews rather than a scripted voiceover. Having a clear plan about what we do and don’t want to cover meant that we could keep the interviews on track and get the most out of every single one. We interviewed the directors of SIAH and a number of researchers, so there was definitely scope for this to become too much for the final film.
The final film ended up sticking pretty closely to the plan that we had created. This isn’t always the case, we’re always open to those spontaneous shifts which make stories more powerful, but it’s nice when the plan is right from the off.
The technical
Concepts
Story development
Story plans
Filming
Editing
Music licensing
Social cuts
Asset delivery
The result
Exploring past, present and future through film.
The film is now a piece of hero content for the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities. It’s a way of getting to the heart of who they are and what they’ve set out to do. But it’s also about something bigger. It’s about our world, what has been and the potentially deadly events that might be coming down the line. Research into the arts and humanities has a role to play in tackling the challenges that we face as a species. We’re so glad to have been involved with this film. We learned a lot about the topic, met amazing people and got to create a film that we can feel proud of.
