Concern Universal

A development charity, Concern Universal needed a video to showcase their work around the world and to communicate the often complex idea of what development both is and does.

Curly Productions brought me in to do some work for Be One Percent. The founders of the charity were going on a trip to Malawi to do some filming as they visited the projects they are helping to fund. I developed the concept of “Take One Minute, Be One Percent” to help provide a brand and on-going online campaign to raise the profile of the charity.

On that trip was Concern Universal. They had never considered having a video as part of their communications mix and when they got back to the UK they met with Christian to talk about how it might work.

I was brought in as storyboarder, scriptwriter and producer. As we discussed what they do and what they needed the video for we realised we were in the middle of a lot of complicated and vast ideas. It’s easy to say “give money to this charity and we help these things happen” but it doesn’t help to communicate the ethos at the heart of an organisation. Concern Universal is all about the ethos of development, of using funding, knowledge, contacts, context and all the resources at the fingertips to make a project come to life.

Writing the script started very simply and in its first draft was written on the back of a beer mat (in true old school copywriter fashion). It was tweaked, the charity threw it around a bit. Then Andy Broadwood from Underexposed Creative created the design concept. My idea was to keep it really simply, to unpick what the charity did through development and associate it with an everyday experience in the real world, meeting someone and inspiring them. The idea that just meeting one person can have an impact that changes people’s lives is at the heart of charity communication.

This is the video created: Concern Universal Short Film

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