Senior management blanched. Crew fell silent. Account Handlers looked bemused. But the Creatives ploughed on regardless. “We just shoot it on a mobile phone. We don’t try and make it LOOK like it was shot on a mobile phone. We don’t torture it into some grainy documentary style. We just use a phone”.
And so it was, dear reader, that JMS put away its many thousand pounds worth of gleaming camera gear, spent 50 quid on some stick-on lens-extenders and hit the road with an entire crew, including a features cameraman, a sound recordist, make-up… plus a mobile phone.
The result? Everything our client, Anglian Water, and the JMS Creatives had wished for!
A natural, youthful and vigorous, warts and all, free-flowing glorious selfie, targeted at a teenage audience. This unusual vlog took-on the tough challenge of engaging kids in the serious issue of our water treatment systems being choked by thoughtlessly disposed-of fats, oils, grease and wipes. Anglian Water and JMS were forced to confront the age old conundrum of avoiding trivialising a heavy subject with too light a touch, yet conveying something grown-up and serious without alienating a young audience.
It wasn’t all down to the selfie-style of course. The programme benefitted massively from a delightfully unaffected and game-for-anything pro-performer who never complained once about spending two days scampering around sewage farms and drains remembering her lines whilst holding, and talking to, the cameraman’s hand. (She dragged him around whilst he held the camera to guarantee the framing. It was a HOOT to watch!).
Telling a colour grader to ignore a massive colour-shift mid shot, or instructing an editor to stop crying and put-in jump cuts where we didn’t need a cut in the first place, was all part of our learning experience. But we loved it. And the client loved it. And above all the audience loved it. But don’t, er, don’t tell anyone will you? About the phone…
