Birmingham City Council’s ‘Independent Living’ team runs a scheme called ‘Houseproud’ that supports people who are elderly or have disabilities. The scheme assists them throughout the process of having home improvement work carried out, often to better adapt their homes to their needs.
Birmingham City Council wanted to extend the reach of the Houseproud scheme so that it could help more people – having successfully used film in the past, they came to Fullrange to help solve the complex problem of engaging with a number of different audiences in the same film.
Fullrange worked with the team to design a film that communicated what Houseproud offered and how to access the service. The core objective was to increase the number of consultation appointments made. The film had a clear ‘call to action’ at the end so that interested parties could engage with the organisation at the right level and take the conversation further.
The tone of the production was an important factor in determining the approach – the project would need to be shot and edited in a style that would work with a broad group of viewers. The socially and culturally diverse audience included young people with disabilities, elderly people, and the carers of elderly people (often their offspring).
The shoot took place over five days at a number of locations around Birmingham. Fullrange interviewed clients, Council staff and people from the scheme’s partnership organisations and filmed past projects as well as work in progress.
A key message to reiterate throughout would be that of reassuring viewers of exactly how the scheme worked and what they could expect. Fullrange worked sensitively with some of Houseproud’s previous clients to get them to tell their stories on-camera and in their own homes, to help reassure the broad audience that their needs could be catered for.
The film was edited at Oakslade Studios in Warwickshire and feedback was received from different stake-holders within the service. Amends were easily incorporated using our online approval system, and two versions of the end product were cut – one for DVD (sent to interested clients when they contact the organisation for further information) and a shorter one for the Council’s website to engage people at first point of access.
The film has since been used by the Council to showcase good practice in the use of video within communications and Fullrange is supporting a launch of the film at the Council House later in the summer.