Presenting the future: Wowing the crowds with engaging stakeholder films

Transport for Greater Manchester HS2 film

As a Manchester video production company, Paper Films have worked with many of Manchester’s most iconic organisations – from Marketing Manchester, Manchester City Council, Bruntwood, the Co-operative, and many more.

One client we’ve worked with for many years is Transport for Greater Manchester – the people who manage Manchester’s bus and tram network and keep the city moving. From advertising campaigns for new ticketing systems, education films to discourage anti-social behaviour, stills advertising campaigns and vox-pop consultation films – we’ve done it all…  

One of the first projects we delivered for them was all about the delivery of HS2 into Manchester. Although as we all know, the project didn’t ultimately happen, we still feel the film we created works well as an exemplar business update film.

The film was to form the centrepiece of a presentation at MIPIM, the world’s leading real estate event in Cannes, on the Manchester stand. We were commissioned to create a powerful, visually impressive film that would explain the proposition, get a highly informed audience excited about the project, and impress a very savvy array of senior politicians and real-estate professionals with high-end production values.

The film would later be used to inform members of the public, so as well as impressing switched-on professionals, it also needed to be easily understandable by the casual viewer and compelling enough that they would watch the whole thing and share with their friends and family.

The whole project needed to be delivered in a very tight timeframe; approx. one month from our first conversation with Transport for Greater Manchester to the sign-off of the final film. This included developing an approach, scripting, sourcing and recording a voiceover artist, filming at various locations across Manchester including drone flights, editing, the creation of complex motion graphics and getting the film approved by a wide range of stakeholders.

We worked closely with the chief executive of Transport for Greater Manchester and his team to ensure that the script hit all their key message, whilst retaining a light and breezy tone and that all our motion graphics clearly represented the project as laid out in their masterplan.

Creating powerful motion graphics in a cost and time effective manner is key to delivering this kind of project, and this film demonstrates our ability to devise and deliver sequences which both convey important information and feel stylish and contemporary. A lot of graphics in these kinds of films fall into the trap of feeling old-fashioned and ‘open university style’, but we pride ourselves in delivering sequences which lift the film and wouldn’t feel out of place in a Netflix documentary.

We also needed to film at a wide range of locations including dangerous / derelict sites in Manchester and working stations, so full risk assessments needed to be carried out.

The film was a success, and the TfGM presentation was regarded as one of the best at the Manchester stand that year.

Transport for Greater Manchester HS2 Film