THE BUILDING WAS THE EASY PART.

A landmark redevelopment was complete. The film had to make people invest in what came next.

• THE SITUATION

A fundraising campaign film, produced in Johannesburg for one of the city's long-established institutions.

One of Johannesburg’s long-established institutions had just completed a multimillion-rand redevelopment of its landmark building. A project of that size is never only a construction exercise. It had brought groups that previously operated separately into one place, and it landed at a time when many of the people who rely on the institution had begun to wonder about their long-term future in the country. The redevelopment answered that fairly emphatically. The institution was putting serious money into staying, and into the generation after this one.

By the time the film was commissioned the construction was finished and a substantial fundraising campaign was underway. The campaign needed people to commit money to what the institution intended to become next.

• THE THINKING

The obvious film was a showcase of the building, and it would have worked against the campaign. Footage of a finished building invites admiration, and admiration leaves people watching from a distance. The campaign needed them closer than that, with something of their own committed to what happened next.

So the film had to change what the redevelopment meant to the person watching it. The building appears throughout, as evidence of an intention rather than as the subject.

• WHAT WAS MADE

A flagship campaign film, developed and produced end to end: story development, storyboarding, architectural cinematography, interviews, directing, music curation, and substantial editing and post-production.

The production had a balance to strike. It needed the scale and finish to sit alongside a redevelopment of that size, in front of an audience who knew the building intimately and would have noticed anything less. Too much architectural spectacle, though, would have pushed out the people, and it is the people who make an audience feel implicated in what happens next. In practice the building establishes the scale early, and the faces and voices carry the film from there. The edit and the music were built towards the thing the campaign was actually asking for.

Target met, then exceeded

THE FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN THE FILM WAS MADE FOR

• WHAT CHANGED

The film formed part of a broader fundraising campaign, and the campaign met its target and then passed it. Films do not raise money on their own, and this one sat inside a much larger effort. It was, though, the piece the campaign led with when it needed people to understand what they were being asked to back.

A film built to turn admiration into investment.

• CASE 02 • END