For the last 18 months, Morrocco Media have had the pleasure of creating the above video for Independent Advocacy Perth and Kinross. They are a charity that provide a free, confidential and non-judgmental support service for people in a range of scenarios. They work with people in prison settings, people suffering from mental and physical disabilities, children and young people, people suffering from dementia, carers and a host of other people.
This project required considerable thought and understanding because they operate across a range of sectors and work with partners and service providers from varying backgrounds. Typically, Independent Advocacy films are either people being interviewed and discussing how Independent Advocacy has helped them, or animation, explaining what Independent Advocacy does with the aid of characters. We wanted to do something unique, challenging and interesting, and hopefully the video above achieves that. The video is aimed at the users of Independent Advocacy, so it was about showing the breadth of services, the people they support (people in prison to high end business people) and simplifying the message of how Independent Advocacy can help people (it's not as easy concept to grasp - it took us a while!). We also wanted to involve the community and do the filming across Perth and Kinross to show that they work outside of Perth, where their main office is based.
The process was not short, over the course of 18 months it took several meetings, iterations and complete re-thinks to reach the finished video. This project was a fun challenge and we had to learn a lot about how the charity operated, but also get a feel for the type of people they employed, so that the messages in the video were as accurate as possible. This process was made very easy, because we were working closely with three full-time members of staff and were often in their offices, where we got to meet the rest of the staff. Many of the actors in the film are volunteers for the charity, so we got a really insightful understanding of the nature of the people working there, and how approachable and helpful they genuinely are, which would put anyone at ease when confronted with a difficult situation.
We really enjoyed the process of working closely with a charity and, by the end, we felt like we were part of a great team, and not just an external service provider. Hopefully, we'll get the opportunity to work with more charities in the future. A real pleasure! Massive thanks to Kieran Duncan for the amazing graphics work, which helped make the story richer.