No School, No Lunch
We love telling stories that make a difference. Being able to inspire others inspires us. So when Mid-Ohio Food Collective (MOFC) approached us about creating a video for their new campaign, we were thrilled to assist.
We love telling stories that make a difference. Being able to inspire others inspires us. So when Mid-Ohio Food Collective (MOFC) approached us about creating a video for their new campaign, we were thrilled to assist.
MOFC came to us with the challenge of creating a video to support their campaign, “No School, No Lunch.” This is an annual campaign to support children and their families facing summertime food scarcity by providing meals. When school is out, it can be much harder for families to feed their children and, in turn, themselves.
For this campaign, they needed a video that not only touched the viewers, prompting them to visit the campaign’s landing page and donate. They also needed a video that accurately represented the people who would be affected by the campaign.
We sat down with the MOFC team and listened as they discussed statistics, geographics, and stories, taking notes on who this video would focus on and what their story would be. We then took those notes and developed the story and script.
We decided to focus this script around the conversations that happen at meal times, centering food at the heart of this and how it plays a role within our everyday lives. Or for the characters in this story, how the lack thereof affects us.
For art direction, we presented a few different options (seen in the image below). But ultimately, it came down to one. Inspired by the children’s book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle, this design was intended to be both accessible to children and nostalgic to the audience. And of course, using “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” in a video about food scarcity just felt like a natural path for us to follow.
We also wanted to keep this design fairly minimalistic, so assets could easily be designed and replicated for future use. Sound design also became important to the overall narrative since we never see the characters speaking, allowing us to imagine them as someone we may know in our own communities.
and how the story was used in a story ecosystem
This 90 sec video also saw several cut-down versions for various use cases, but the main video lives on the campaign website. The shorter videos led people to said website to view the full film and get involved in the cause.
based on trust, not just metrics
The film has helped directly lead to the fundraising of tens of thousands of dollars for families facing food insecurity. Not only has it provided people with necessary information about the campaign, but it also told a story that recognized and humanized an experience that some audience members may have been unfamiliar with.
We’re so glad we were able to be a part of this important campaign. If you’d like to donate to Mid-Ohio Food Collective, you can follow this link here.
Sometimes you just have to follow the story, and we certainly did. But we also needed to stick to a specific budget. So we designed these frames to follow the plates so the food could tell the story.
Since we were working with food trays, plates, and text as opposed to characters, we needed to make those elements really pop. So animation was vital to getting the message across while keeping things entertaining and eye-catching.
We knew we wanted the music to feel integrated into the video, but we weren’t sure about the voice over. We recorded some temporary VO and fell in love with it. So we recorded with a group of kids of varying ages and then worked with Stereo Couture to develop the beautiful final mix.
with us.A strong partnership between organization and studio is the crux of great creation. We listen. We ask questions. We seek out the story hiding beneath the surface. Then we bring it to life through creative documentation.
