The brief
Building understanding with video
NIHR is an organisation that supports and elevates outstanding researchers in the health space. The research these people and teams generate is not purely academic, it feeds directly into the health and wellbeing of real people.
Part of their role, as well as directly supporting researchers, is being there to make sure that research is better. For example, making sure that certain practices become a part of researchers’ natural thinking. One example of this is wanting to help researchers to think about the impact of their research and how they communicate this right from minute one.
NIHR wanted to create a series of animations that would help researchers to understand what research impact is, how they can plan for it and the importance of doing so. The animations needed to be engaging for an academic audience, easy to follow and fit within the NIHR brand.
What we did
This project was a little out of the ordinary. Most of our pre-production process would be the same, but there were some quite specific needs. Firstly, the scripts for each animation would need to be approved by a medical advice panel, adding extra complexity. We also knew that an element of co-creation was going to be necessary. There was a need to book in even more production meetings than usual so that we could navigate the NIHR structure.
None of this was an issue, it just meant that we needed to be even more bespoke about pre-production. We still looked at messaging, goals, outcomes, style and how we tie all of that together, there just needed to be some extra admin.
As pre-production was done on a rolling basis, we had to produce one animation at a time. We got into a good rhythm of producing a script, creating a visual concept, storyboarding and then actually animating for one video at a time. Each animation was signed off and ready to use before we started on the next one to suit the needs of NIHR.
Our main aim when producing these animations was to make sure that we were creating something helpful, but also stylised. We looked to combine icons and characters into scenes that could tell a story about why impact literacy is important. We wanted each scene we worked on to be informative, but we also wanted them to be interesting. One of our primary goals through production was making this a reality.
The technical
Schedules and timelines
Concept development
Production meetings
Asset creation
Storyboarding
Animation
Music licensing
Subtitling
The result
A challenging brief realised.
We created a series of 5 animations that gave researchers clear information on how they could plan for impact. These animations will be used to help researchers build this into their work for the public good. The videos themselves were able to strike a balance between meeting this need without sacrificing style and storytelling.
