Case study — eSafety

Challenge

Women living with intellectual or cognitive disability may experience technology-facilitated abuse. We worked with the eSafetywomen team at the Office of the eSafety Commissioner to develop a series of three videos to raise awareness about this technology-facilitated abuse, experienced by women with intellectual or cognitive disability. Directed and produced by our Senior Creative Producer and Director, Dana Newell, these videos were made for disability services and support workers supporting women living with intellectual or cognitive disability who may be at risk of, or experiencing, technology-facilitated abuse. The final videos followed the stories of three women; Anna, Rebecca and Patrice. The stories were based on real life experiences.
A woman sits on her bed while looking at her phone

An authentic and inclusive approach

When creating content where authenticity is vital for its social impact, we believe it’s important to spend the appropriate time in research and development and creative development. In an effort to bring that authentic and intentional approach to the project, we worked with Fusion Theatre: a theatre company committed to developing the skills and talents of its members in an inclusive environment as ​they work together to create and present original and captivating theatre.

It’s not every project you have time to develop and workshop the characters with the actors over a series of weeks. When developing the scripts, we workshopped the stories with the team at Fusion Theatre, developed the narrative with the actors at the company and cast them in the films. When working with the actors, Dana ensured that she and the actors had the time to develop a closeness and trust that would facilitate those authentic emotions.

 

“I believe because I was able to develop a friendship with the actors over the time of scripting and rehearsing, when it came time for filming, I was able to play with the actors and draw from our past conversations to reach and capture a certain emotion. For example, I would never ask an actor to ‘be more sad’, but rather ask roundabout questions that will produce a more authentically emotional performance. You don’t want an actor to act sad, you want them to be sad.” – Dana Newell

At each stage of production we consulted with not for profit capacity enhancing service, Belonging Matters, who has a passion for social inclusion. They offered us feedback along the way to incorporate into the project. We wanted to ensure the subject matter and final product was inclusive and appropriate for the target audience.

Voice overs as the narrative focus

We chose to use voice overs coupled with slow motion footage for a few reasons. One of them being that we had a lot of scenes to film over the course of the day in order to show a complete narrative. To keep the production focused on spending time to get the shots looking good and emotions authentic, we wanted to keep the actions in each frame simple. Taking away dialogue and purely focusing on actions and ‘being’ was the way we achieved this authenticity.

This is a great success story about what happens when a client trusts us to research and develop the content based on what we want the outcome to be and how it’s intended to be used. When developing content; budget, time, distribution plans and the end user and outcome is at the forefront of our minds.

Two women lean over a device at the kitchen table

A safe set

Our talent’s comfortability and emotional wellbeing were paramount to us, as we were filming about very heavy and sometimes triggering subject matter. We created a safe environment for our talent by having their support workers on set, and the Fusion Theatre Director, Magda on set, whom all the cast are very close with. You can watch the full videos, available with closed captions, Auslan, audio description and transcripts, here.

Outcome

"As part of the campaign deliverables, eSafety wanted these videos to be as accessible as possible. With that in mind, we edited Auslan and audio description versions which are available on their website. We worked with Expression Australia, a professional partner, to help us with the Auslan translation. This is a wonderful and worthy campaign that we hope will help all women to feel in control and empowered in life."

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