My Favourite Project (Mike)
Welcome to the fifth instalment of our ‘My Favourite Project’ series of blog posts!
We love every client we work with and every project we tackle here at Stone’s Throw, but for our team there are usually one or two projects which stand out above the rest as personal favourites.
In this series, we’ll be asking each member of Team STM to share with you their favourite project to date, and reveal why it’s their Number One.
This time around we’re hearing from our Chief Biscuit Dunker, Mike!
Who was our client for this project?
My favourite project is the famous “Straight Outta Compton Hospice” video we made back in the summer of 2016 for Compton Hospice – now known as Compton Care.
Could you tell us about the client’s initial brief for this one?
So at the time the team at Compton were putting a lot of effort into trying to change people’s perceptions regarding hospice care.
They really wanted to dispel the myth that the only service they offered was “end of life” care and that being a patient there meant “the end”.
They wanted a video to try and combat this myth, so they approached us with an existing idea in mind and asked us if we could help develop it for them.
This idea was based on “Straight Outta Compton” – the title of the debut album by the NWA (and the name of the 2015 biographical film about the group) – or should I say “Straight Outta Compton Hospice”!
What part did you play in tackling this brief, and how did you go about it?
I was the project leader for this one, so firstly I helped the Hospice develop their idea and bring it to life, and then secondly I led the day of filming itself – ably supported by my colleagues Tom and Ben who both brought something different to the table.
Leading this project resulted in a few hairy moments! The most notable one was we really wanted to fly our drone over a road, and asked the relevant people if we could close the road to do this.
That was a no-go, so we ended up “unofficially” closing it for a short while instead. Flying the drone safely was the most important thing for us, so annoying a few people in the process wasn’t really a massive concern to be honest!
Why do you think that this one is your favourite project so far?
This one is my favourite for a whole heap of reasons.
Firstly, as you can see above, our video for this project used humour to make a serious point – a technique I love as I like anything humour based.
Secondly, everybody involved was 100% invested and committed in this project – which I think was really, really important.
Due to its nature I think if people were half-hearted it wouldn’t have worked, but everyone – my colleagues, the team at Compton Hospice, the actors both young and old – really understood what we were trying to do and helped us nail it by being so enthusiastic and resourceful.
I’ve always said that for this project it was the people that made it what it was.
On this note – an anecdote.
I was sitting in the car during a quiet moment with Val – the elderly actress. I asked her what she would usually be doing at this time of day on a Sunday, and she told me she would be in church.
The memory of her telling me that whilst wearing sunglasses, a chain around her neck and “knuckle dusters” will live with me for a long time!
Finally, the great results this video got need to be mentioned – although for me all that was a bonus.
I remember waking up the morning after the Hospice had pushed the video out online and seeing that it had racked up 80,000 views on Facebook.
After that it was picked up on by several local newspapers and BBC Midlands Today and it all started going a bit crazy.
The last time I looked its Facebook views were up to 280,000 and it had been shared over 2,400 times, and even a few years on people still talk to me about it.
So that’s my favourite project! If you want to find out more about “Straight Outta Compton Hospice”, we penned a portfolio piece on it right here!
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