Together For Short Lives
Together for Short Lives is the UK charity that speaks for children and young people with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions.
We were asked to create a video that would help raise the profile and fundraising potential of the charity, and connect emotionally with the target end-users – parents, carers and health workers.
When Hurricane became involved, the charity wanted a talking head based, functional description of what they did. Our creative team felt this wouldn’t deliver the objectives that the charity needed to achieve, and worked with them to develop a far more emotive film that really got to the heart of what they do.
After an in-depth meeting with the team at the charity, we decided that there were themes arising that would form the basis for an impactful, emotional story that would really inspire people to get involved with the cause.
A common thread began to appear – from "being cast adrift" when parents heard this news, to feeling "grounded" and supported by children's hospice and palliative care services and by calling the Together for Short Lives family helpline.
Production then started by interviewing a number of parents whose children have been diagnosed with life-limiting disorders. This highly sensitive task was conducted across the country and then formed the basis of the story we created.
We turned these experiences into a poignant, yet uplifting script vividly delivered by Bristol actor, Jessica Macdonald. Along with animator and illustrator Katy Davis, the Hurricane team set about the task of distilling this into a short hand-drawn film. This animation was then overlaid with composited effects and emotive music.
The animated film forms the centre of a wider campaign for Together for Short Lives with the hashtag #HavingABaby.
We worked with the charity to plan a campaign around the project via featured blog articles and YouTube advertising pre-rolls. This enabled them to gain traction with key opinion leaders and has led to the film being featured on prestigious blogs such as 'Mumsnet' and 'Creative Bloq'.
We are thrilled with the We're having a baby animation ... We worked very closely with their team, drawing on our experience of working with families and the children's palliative care sector to create a moving film which tells a difficult story.
Barbara Gelb, Chief Executive, Together for Short Lives
The film has been very successful for Together for Short Lives, and we are working with them on several further projects. The project has had 24,000 views on YouTube which is over 10 times the number they have had for any previous video.
If you've got a project in mind, or just want to have a chat, please get in touch.
Contact us