National Health and Medical Research Council Proposal
Appendix A - Case Studies
Case Study 1 - The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
An overview...
In 2017 Nate Dukes Creative was engaged by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to create a series of 25 videos to form the training package of their new International Development Facility. This involved a solid pre-production process, liaising with staff from the Department to understand the look and feel they were looking for, scouting the best locations to suit the required style and scheduling time to interview senior executives with busy schedules.
In the production phase of the process, we booked out three days for filming several weeks apart. As we were shooting pieces to camera without a script and a teleprompter, we recorded two different camera angles in order to hide any cuts we needed to make in the footage to make the pieces more concise and watchable. As you can see above, we were able to work with the talent on the day to get takes that worked largely unedited.
We then went into the editing booth, cutting the footage down to make it as smooth and polished as possible. We transcribed and created subtitles for each video to ensure they were compliant with WCAG accessibility standards and delivered them via DFAT's internal content upload process.
Case Study 2 - Amnesty International and ANTaR
An overview...
In 2017 Nate Dukes Creative was approached by Amnesty International and ANTaR to cover the launch of their National Youth Justice Plan at Parliament House. The client needed both video and stills taken for a range of purposes, including for use on social media.
When arriving on the day, an approaching storm front caused the team a great deal of concern. As we were covering an event the timeframe was tight and there wasn’t much scope for delaying the project. We were prepared to move inside incase the weather took a turn, having brought more gear than we needed in case of a situation like this. Luckily, the storm blew through quickly and we were able to resume plan A.
As the event was at Parliament House, the team was faced with some challenges inherent to shooting in an uncontrolled environment. The light was continually changing, and the level of ambient noise was extremely high, with a lawnmower and school buses driving past continuously in the background. To deal with this, we deviated from our normal sound setup and relied on lavaliere microphones to cut out the ambient noise and isolate the voice of the speaker.
Case Study 3 - American Institute for Research’s Quality Reading Project, Tajikistan
An overview...
In 2017 Caitlin Welch was a consultant for the American Institute for Research (AIR) & USAID in Central Asia, engaged to enhance their online presence through current, informative communications materials, detailing the project’s indicators throughout its target regions. Working with staff in regional, country and international offices in Washington, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, coordinating to gather information, share visions and branding requirements for materials created.
The pre-production and filming process spanned over two weeks, based in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe, taking trips out to surrounding regions. Work included coordinating with government departments, local schools and organisations to ensure permissions were obtained and that all parties agreed upon the process.
Caitlin filmed interviews, and photographed and filmed students, families and teachers from eight different schools across the three target regions of the project. Liaising with project managers, program coordinators, teachers and schools to arrange times for the filming, we worked to ensure we had as little impact as possible on the school children's daily schedule.
The original video was going to cover the success indicators from the Early Grading Reading Assessment (EGRA) and explore how to use these indicators to better inform policy and syllabus. During the post production process the Department of Education in Tajikistan took the endline survey results for EGRA and published alternative findings, increasing the results of the children’s exams. Because of this, the project donor USAID made the decision to end the project and as a result the film was not able to be produced. After this Caitlin proposed they create an alternative video, sharing information from the overall project instead of focusing on the results of the EGRA. The video was agreed upon by AIR and USAID and the above video was the end result.
The editing process involved going through AIR’s 2016/17 annual aid program reports to gather information for the script of the film, then crafting the recorded visual to match the script, trimming it from eight hours of footage.