From the secrets to home-filming to non-profits for disabled people, here’s our pick of the latest in video communications. For more from #CommunicateLens, follow @Communicatemag.

Katpcha TV

Video production agency Kaptcha created ‘Insider Secrets of Home-filming’ a mini-series of short 30 and 60 seconds tutorials designed to support communicators wanting to encourage their CEOs, executives, senior leaders and people to generate home-filmed interviews or user-generated content for social media platforms. The webinar series are divided in different themes, including device, which gives suggestion on what is the best device to film on, landscape, camera, lighting, sound and so on. The series are also accompanied by a free downloadable White Paper which provides professional advise designed to support Comms director when devising and creating videos.

“Since running our CMA Learning webinars, we’ve had a number of requests to cover particular areas within content marketing. One of the topics that kept cropping up was ‘video’, from how to create a video during the lockdown, to improving on what you’ve done,” says content marketing association membership director membership director Rob John.

Rainbow Trout Films

Film and TV production company, Rainbow Trout Films launched a four-minute video ‘Celebrating 10 years of creativity’ to celebrate its 10^th anniversary. For the first minute, the director and producer, James Mellor, talks to the camera thanking all its clients and colleagues of the past ten years. The rest of the video includes clips that highlight the best videos Rainbow Trout created in the past decade, including the 6-part inflight food trip documentary produced for Amazon Prime Video. By combining the different footage from past clips, the video conveys to the audience the range of diverse work Rainbow Trout does, from documentaries shot at high altitudes to corporate videos produced for big companies. The up-beat background song gives the video an overall celebratory tone.

Quick Cuts Media

Tennessee-based video and media company Quick Cuts Media worked with Best Buddies, an non-profit global volunteer group that helps physically and intellectually disabled people, to create a four-and-a-half-minute video that delves into Best Buddies’ mission and the ways in which it impacts disabled children across the world. The video, which was created by using available footage, new footage and some additional interviews features different members of the Best Buddies projects. The video opens with an interview with the director of programs Missy Naff, who explains the non-profit’s history. As she speaks, the video shows footage of a girl with Down Syndrome sitting in a classroom and looking longingly towards her peers, who are chatting in a corner. ‘There’s no scientist in a lab working on a pill to cure social isolation. The cure is awareness, people becoming involved,” Naff says, summarising Best Buddies’ mission.

The same girl is then invited to go bowling with some friends, who she met through the friendship program in school. By combining different voices, including the one of Naff, a mother of a disabled girl and a participant of the program, with real footage that shows the projects acted out plays on the audiences’ pathos while also conveying in a clear way the multifaceted style of the organisation. Although the video tackles a very emotional subject (the mother is seen crying as she talks about her daughter finding friends) it retains honesty, avoiding becoming a cliché, charity-style ad.