Empowering
Futures
A film for
Empowering
Futures
We created a 5 minute micro documentary for Bristol charity, Empowering Futures, to showcase how the care farm works, who they help and how their work impacts the wider community. Since its release, our film has been successful in securing them additional funding from private and public bodies and has helped individuals seeking support from the charity to feel confident in taking those difficult but important first steps.
Learn more about Empowering Futures here
The Task
Empowering Futures help disadvantaged members of the community to find their feet through therapeutic activities, social prescribing and 1 to 1 teaching. They also have a focus on sustainable living and are working to reconnect people with our environment; from the food we eat to the clothes we wear. They carry out activities including: caring for animals, planting fruits and vegetables, gardening and arts and crafts using materials sourced on the farm.
We wanted to create a video that would encapsulate all of this information, but more importantly, recreate the warm, relaxed and hopeful feeling of the farm which is harder to convey over written text and still images. Many of the people they seek to support struggle to make the first steps to physically visit the farm and meet the owners, Kelly and Maria. The film offers a solution to help bridge that gap.
The Process
After planning and preparation, we spent two days at Empowering Futures, capturing the everyday life of the care farm and spending time with all the amazing co workers (a title given to everyone who works there). We filmed a mixture of activities to show the range of therapies they offer and spent valuable time with the founders to capture relaxed and warm interviews that are representative of the farm.
We decided to weave actuality with the interviews, blending real action and cover shots in order to capture a sense of what the care farm is really like. Kelly, one of the founders, emphasised the importance of people being in touch and aware of their senses and surroundings. This is especially important for those with autism or people who have become disconnected from everyday life, and so we built a soundscape of all the different noises of the farm which we pieced together during the edit of the film. We used a mixture of music tracks and blended several together to create an atmospheric and relaxing tone.
