Understanding a Charity's mission: How we make powerful Community Films

Liverpool Football Club Foundation

At Paper Films we particularly enjoy working with organisations that make a real difference to people’s lives.

From Housing Association films, school films, fundraising films and more, we love the feeling that we are helping make the UK a better place to live, and it doesn’t get better than getting the opportunity to re-launch one of the region’s most important charities!  

Several years ago, we were approached by the Liverpool Football Club’s Charity Foundation. They were relaunching and wanted to create a film to demonstrate to a room full of senior stakeholders and high-value charity donors the amazing work the foundation was doing across the city and why it needed their continuing support.

Paper Films worked with the Foundation to develop an approach, including drafting the key messages and working these up into a script and organising trips to a wide range of locations including schools, training facilities, career centres run by the club, events for disabled young people, Alder Hey Hospital, the Centre for Tropical Disease and more.  

Our approach was to focus on the people, and we spent a lot of time working with the parents and young people who have benefitted from the Foundation’s work, as well as stakeholders at institutions who have received funding. This film demonstrates our sensitive interview style and our ability to capture powerful footage in busy, working environments without impacting on the events taking place. It also shows our attention to detail in capturing smaller, human moments, such as smiles, hugs, laughter etc. which give the film it’s emotional impact.  

We advised that the motion graphics idents we created were gentle, non-intrusive and focused on the people of Liverpool, rather than going overboard with 3d animations, flashing lights and colours. This guides our approach to all our project; letting the subject and the atmosphere of the film guide our creative choices, rather than taking a one-size fits all approach.  

Ultimately, we feel this film typifies the way we spend time understanding a client and the work they do and goes on to show how we capture the spirit of a place and the people who live there. It is a little longer than we would usually advise for a web-film, but as its original purpose was to be shown at a launch dinner, it gave us the scope to work up what would have been a shorter, punchier piece into a slower, more documentary style.  

This film also demonstrates the experience our enhanced DBS checked team have working in educational environments and other sensitive locations. We are very used to filming with children, young people and students and can draw out great content from nervous or over-excited subjects. We’re also confident working with more time-strapped (and sometimes more challenging) subjects such as footballers, Chief Executives, business leaders and senior academics.

We went on to create a series of films for the club’s sponsors featuring world-class football players.

Why not speak to us about how we can make a charity film that impresses without blowing the budget?

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