We are very proud to announce that we have been given two Awards of Recognition by the Accolade Global Film Competition, for our film Nasarawa State: Elimination and Beyond, in the categories Documentary Short, and Educational / Instructional / Training. 

This film looks at the success of overcoming and eliminating a crippling disease that has besieged Nigeria for decades – River Blindness. Thanks to the dedication of Nasarawa State Coordinator for Neglected Tropical Diseases Jacob Danboyi Righain, the support of NGO partners The Carter Center and donation of the treating drug Mectizan by Merck & Co., local communities have been empowered to break transmission of river blindness. 

With elimination of the disease in sight, they are now being retrained to treat other conditions like malaria and schistosomiasis, so that the infrastructure, knowledge and skills this valuable commodity at the heart of the community are  not laid to waste.

The film also features a bespoke soundtrack, to complement the human story and really transport the viewer. Read more about this here. 

The Accolade recognizes film, television, videography and new media professionals who demonstrate exceptional achievement in craft and creativity, and those who produce standout entertainment or contribute to profound social change. Entries are judged by highly qualified professionals in the film and television industry. Information about the Accolade and a list of recent winners can be found at www.accoladecompetition.org

Telling human stories, highlighting the hugely important work of those in the Global Health sector, and promoting equality in healthcare is hugely important to us, so it feels wonderful to be recognised in this way. 

Watch the film in full here.

Nasarawa State: Elimination and Beyond

“Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Anderson

In video production, music is an essential piece to the storytelling jigsaw. It supports the overall tone of a film playing with our emotions, encouraging us to feel in a particular way. The decision on what to use however, is often left until the edit. When budgets are limited, royalty-free music is the preferred choice. It can work really well but it can be a bit of a compromise. Put your ear to the door of many an edit suite and you’ll hear too corporate, too funky, and quite often too much of a cliché.

So what’s the alternative?

Well, you can use commercial music. In my early days as a TV Director, the opportunity to use some of my favourite music was always fun – but in hindsight the music can be a distraction from the story if it’s well known. Then of course there’s the cost. Using commercial music is expensive as well as the bureaucracy involved in getting approval to use it – that’s why broadcasters have departments dedicated to clearing it. I shan’t mention who, but one of the world’s biggest bands requires an application on why you want to use one of their songs. Good for them – that just means it’s a path few producers have the time to pursue.

Then there’s commissioned music – paying a composer to make something unique. Again, not a particularly cheap option but you have more control over usage and its impact will be substantial given how much more connected it will feel to the visuals as composers take their cue from what they see in the edit.

Which brings me to Steve Maud, Cloud9Media’s Creative Director. We’re fortunate in that he’s an accomplished musician and he revels in the opportunity to create soundtracks for our films – when he’s got the time! Check out his work in this film we made in Nigeria for the Mectizan Drug Program (MDP). You can watch it below – let us know what you think!

Stamp Out Oncho: Elimination and Beyond

Read the original article by Duncan Walsh on LinkedIn here

Films for the Global Health Sector have been a major pillar of Cloud9Media since we first began, but in 2020 it’s an issue that’s been thrust to the forefront of everyone’s minds. 

The year began for us with a shoot in Nigeria, filming local communities where River Blindness has been eradicated in some states, thanks to the wonderful work of the Mectizan Donation Program. Our MD Steve Maud flew out, working with local crew; we have a long history of using local talent to shoot our films – something that high profile organisations such as Comic Relief have seen the importance of more recently.

Little did we know that this would be our last time on location for quite a while, so we were very glad that we also documented the trip in this little behind the scenes film. 

Straight off the plane, we dusted off our cameras and went straight to report on the trip at ISNTD, held at the Wellcome Institute, meeting other great minds about the challenges around raising awareness of Neglected Tropical Diseases. This would be the last live event we attended this year. 

Like everyone this year, COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the way that we’ve worked but our experience making films internationally has helped us adapt quickly to new ways of working. 

We were particularly excited to begin working with brand new clients FIND & The Global Fund in July. This started with an animation piece on the importance of diagnostics and testing for COVID-19, our first film to be shown to the WHO. 

Our latest film for them, ‘Normalise Testing’ went from concept to delivery in just four weeks! We used our newly developed system of remote directing, using Zoom and the best local talent for crew, to set up large-scale shoots in Mumbai, Estonia and Kenya. It meant some very early (2am GMT!) starts, but we loved working on this hugely ambitious and important project, bringing together old friends and new across the world, in three time zones! 

We also enjoyed working on a film on FIND’s OptiDX platform, which included interviews from India, Kenya and Switzerland, helping people across low and middle income countries gain access to more efficient HIV and TB diagnoses. 

Another highlight for us was to be invited back by ISNTD in May, this time to host a webinar ‘Stats to Stories’, showing NGOs how age-old storytelling techniques can be used to raise awareness and funding. You can still watch the full thing here.

We were also very honoured to be crowned the winner of the Irish Global Health Network photography competition. This was especially important to us as the prize is not just about the photograph, but a demonstration of ethics, something that is at the heart of everything we do. You can read more about our entry here.

We are hugely grateful to all our clients to allow us to be involved in such inspiring and important projects, and looking forward to many more in 2021, including a brand new project for HAI on increasing access to insulin for diabetes sufferers globally.

Arts & Learning is something that Cloud9Media has always been incredibly passionate about, and represents a mindset that we bring to all of our films. The pandemic has been a catalyst for reflection, and our desire to keep on creating whilst stuck at home has allowed us to really establish this passion as its own pillar of the business. 

People have always used video to tell their stories, and this year we’ve seen people turn to their webcams and phones like never before.  With little or no technical experience, this can be a difficult endeavour, and can leave us feeling distant and disconnected.  So we decided to share our expertise, and quickly created some resources to help people get the most out of whatever equipment they already had. From our first Phone shooting handbook, lighting tips  and our Social Media Smash Hit The C9M Guide to Looking Sexy!

Some of our ever talented team have used this year to explore personal projects, and we’ve loved seeing what they’ve come up with! From poetic shorts, to travel docs and of course lot’s of experimenting with drones!

In the last few months, we’ve begun working with some very inspirational new clients that have allowed us to bring out our humanitarian values, and celebrate communities. 

This began in July in our first shoot on location since lockdown, for the innovative Workspace and Childcare facility Playhood in Crouch End, who have brought Montessori education into a co-working space to give everyone the best outcome in life.

Another project that we are beyond excited about is working with the totally inspirational Dr Niamh Shaw, who is working towards her dream of being the first non-astronaut in space, representing the human race as an artist.  The final film is going to be truly out of this world and we can’t wait to share it!

Our colleagues in the event sector, have been hit harder than most by the pandemic. We reached out to them and went down the the #WeMakeEvents protest in parliament square to film and connect with demonstrators, exploring what has brought them out in their masses, and why the events industry is so important and needs saving. 

We are already plotting some extremely exciting new projects in both the arts and education sectors in 2021, including a new ambitious projects bringing performance to tell global stories – the Human Essence project. Watch this space for more details!

When making Business Communications films, we pride ourselves in delivering video that fosters engagement, getting to the heart of organisations by showing the real personalities that create a company. This year has, of course, had the biggest impact on the way businesses operate in recent memory. People have been kept apart from their colleagues for months on end. After the initial shock of the pandemic hitting, our clients quickly realised it was important to nurture their company community and keep staff engaged and motivated.

We started the year, having just returned from New York, covering FICO WORLD for one of our longest standing clients FICO, travelling to South Africa to create a film for the Comic Relief British Airways partnership, Flying Start, and another trip to Vienna and Budapest, looking at the green energy initiatives of Marriott International.

It wasn’t long before live events and international travel ground to a halt. While many  tech companies were minimally impacted, some got a lot busier. Everyone spent more time online – including the criminals who saw an opportunity. Cyber fraud and financial crime levels surged.

FICO provides cutting edge technology to the financial industry to combat it. They realised it was more important than ever for them to continue to communicate efficiently both within their business and to their clients, but with contributors stuck in far flung locations, producing high quality, engaging video that had a clear message was going to throw up some new challenges.

We worked quickly to develop new systems to manage shoots remotely, drawing on our experience in the Global Health sector of sourcing the best local crews, and directing via Zoom, we learnt how to make sure everyone in our team was working to a shared vision, even across continents!

Here’s a little behind the scenes of how we made our first fully remotely directed film for FICO. 

You can also see one of the the final films here.

We’ve also been working on some new projects for World Courier, an international medical courier company that are dealing with many new challenges during the pandemic. 

Eager to tell the story of how their dedicated team stepped up to play their part in the fight against COVID-19, we have been working with their couriers in Columbia, creating a comprehensive briefing pack to help them self–shoot footage using their phones, telling the story on the ground through their eyes.

We’ve worked hard on furthering our  coaching and consultation services this year too. With business leaders having to take more control of their tech requirements, we’ve spent time teaching people how to get the most out of Zoom presentations, webinar hosting and virtual board meetings. No job has been too small, and we’ve loved sharing some of our tips of the trade, to help leaders develop their skills whilst looking and feeling more confident. 

We’re looking forward to many more exciting projects in 2021. Whilst we hope we’ll be able to make our way back to working with more people face to face, we’re sure many of the new working systems and techniques we’ve developed this year will stand us in good stead for months to come. 

We are incredibly honoured that our photograph ‘Sarah Simon’, taken by William Nsai has won the Irish Global Health Network’s Global Photography Competition, and ‘The Oncho Elimination Team’ was shortlisted. You can read all about the competition, and see the other wonderful shortlisted entries here https://globalhealth.ie/photocomp/. 

It was judged by Savannah Dodd from the Photography Ethics Centre; Ben de la Cruz, editor of multimedia coverage on global health and development at NPR; and Matt Writtle, an award winning documentary and portrait photographer.

Participants were asked to respond to the following with their photo entries:

What does working in global health look like? What are the realities on the ground? What are the challenges, and what are the impacts?

We love telling the stories of the amazing people we get to meet through our Global Health projects, so it feels wonderful to be recognised in this way. 

Our context statement for our entry is below. 

Sarah Simon, an Lymphatic Filariasis sufferer washes herself in the way she has been taught, restoring dignity and a better quality of life.

This photograph was taken in Nasawara State in late February 2020. She is one of a group of women who attended a workshop held by Community Drug Distributors on how to wash themselves in such a way that will minimise disfiguration, or prevent them developing the disease.

The workshop was filmed by Cloud9Media for the Meztican Donation Programme for a project about broken transmission in Nasawara State. 

As filmmakers documenting NTD programs, one of the main challenges is not to present subjects in a way that is tarnished with our preconceptions of what it must be like to live with a disease, or in a different culture. 

The aim is not to invoke pity, but to show the successes and achievements that are gained from working to eradicate NTDs and therefore demonstrate that they are of high value and worth continuing funding. 

This photograph portrays a proud, hardworking woman and loving mother, who has accepted some help from her peers in order to give herself more independence and dignity.