Working with the Ministry of Education on a campaign to encourage school attendance
Together with our parent company Studioseven, we collaborated with the Ministry of Education on a very worthy campaign. Forming part of the Education Ministry’s motto ‘Nitghallmu lkoll flimkien’ (Learning all together), we worked to produce a series of 3 video clips and a number of graphics for social media.
The Challenge
The ministry explained that some parents might still be unsure about sending their children to school due to the pandemic. Our job was to communicate the message that not only are schools safe because of the excellent health measures in place, but also that students themselves want to return to class because they benefit academically, socially, and developmentally.
The best way to get the message of safety and holistic benefit across was through video clips. We worked on three 30-second video clips to be shown on TV and social media.
We wanted to resonate with children, but also appeal to parents as they are the decision-makers. We came up with a story about two students, Jake and Leah, who are brother and sister. Leia returned to class as soon as school re-opened, because she really enjoys learning and meeting up with her friends and teachers. She recently started vlogging – showing her daily life to her online friends.
We join her in her morning vlog where she tells us why she’s looking forward to going to school.
Leah finds her brother having breakfast in the kitchen, he has been attending school online. But this morning he’s wearing his uniform… what’s going on? Jake decided it’s time to go back to attending class in person, because he has some very important exams coming up.
Finally, we asked some educators to share their insight. We spoke to teachers about how students benefit from being in class, and why it’s so important.
Set up
We were invited to use St Thomas More College Żejtun Secondary School as our filming location. The challenge was to make their hospitality suite look like a child’s bedroom, and their home economics class look like a regular kitchen. With the right props and lighting, we made it happen!
Design
Our senior creative designer created a visual theme for the images appearing on social media, news portals, and billboards, as well as for the end frame of the videos. The visuals incorporated circular frames and cross shapes to convey the message of cleanliness and health. We took professional photography of the same people appearing in the videos for these images. By working in this way, we made sure our visuals were consistent in content and style across different media – thereby connecting the dots in the viewer’s mind.
Filming
Following all COVID-19 precaution measures meant that filming was a little more tricky than usual – but when you work with a professional filming crew, like the one from Studioseven, they can adapt to the situation. The crew and child actors followed all protocols while shooting, making sure to sanitise hands and keep distant.
We filmed over two days at the school location. The first day, we worked with the child actress playing Leah, to film her vlog scene, and then we worked with the young man playing Jake for his scene. The next day we returned to the school to capture the teachers’ interviews. We also got some complementary footage of students walking in to school and the COVID protocols in place.
Our work
- Concept creation
- Creative direction
- Design
- Photography
- Planning
- Script-writing
- Direction
- Set dressing
- Lighting
- Audio
- Filming
- Editing & post-production
Fun fact: we decided to use the child actors’ real names, to make these clips as authentic as possible!
