Celebrating our creators: How to craft case study Films that stand out

Made Smarter

At Paper Films we love telling stories – to me the best bit of working in video production is getting to go to places you’d never otherwise go and find out about the amazing (and often unusual) things going on up and down the country.

From Oscar Winning puppetry, high-tech automated egg processing, innovative robotic production lines and much more, the UK is a hotbed of creative people doing awe-inspiring things.  

What did we do?

Our work with Made Smarter, the organisation dedicated to kick-starting the UK’s manufacturing sector’s uptake of new technology, gave us the chance to meet some of these people and find out about what they do.

Our Manchester film crew fanned out across the Northwest, creating a series of case study films giving a glimpse into what these people were doing, how they were using technology to change their businesses for the better, and what it all means for the future of the UK.

Each film in this suite had its own distinctive look and feel, allowing Made Smarter to showcase the breadth of its mission to businesses and government stakeholders.

One of our favourites is the film we made for the heritage clock repair specialists The Cumbria Clock Company. They are one of the last group of expert engineers capable of maintaining the UKs historic clocks. From cathedral spires to Manchester Town Hall and rare grandfather clocks to Big Ben they the people keeping our heritage ticking and preserving skills at risk of dying out.

Conducting powerful interviews:

Creating interview films is more challenging than it appears. You have to put people at their ease and relax them so you can draw out their stories in a natural fashion – their words need to reflect them not feel like corporate film messaging. We like to take our time and have long chats which we capture on two cameras. This gives our subjects space to get used to the cameras and open-up.

Sometimes this is easier, and people relax immediately, other times you must work with them as they get used to the slightly strange experience (for most people!) of being interviewed for a video production.

The next step comes in editing the interviews – to get the nuggets of interview gold that make the film sing, you need to sift through sometimes hours of interview content. When you’ve been doing it for a while you get an intuitive sense of the moments which stand-out, the disparate pieces which work well together and the stuff that’s destined for the cutting room floor.