Leeds City Council – Case Study

 

Client Film Title: Environmental Services Recruitment
Client Name: Leeds City Council
Director: Matt Rolfe
Editor: Josh Richardson
Camera Ops: Josh Richardson, Matt Rolfe

The Brief
LCC were looking for a recruitment video to be produced that showcased their values as a company and diversity of roles available whilst portraying the Environmental Services’ working culture in a light that countered some of the stigmatism it typically faces.

Services

• Pre-Production
  We met with Hayley in person at their HQ where were able to do a recce of their offices and discuss the direction of the video. Through the meeting we determined that they were happy for us to take more of a creative approach, steering away from the more direct and typically corporate stylings that recruitment videos tend to fall within. From here we put together a shot-list, pulling ideas from and references that were VO lead and whilst making use of visual stylings such as frame in frame sequences and stills based content.
• Production
  We filmed over two days across over 10 locations in Leeds. Hayley meticulously coordinated our schedule which was key to us successfully capturing such a wide variety of content. Some of the areas we engaged with were following bin crews around Roundhay, visiting recycling centres, speaking to teams of volunteer litter pickers, street sweepers, crime scene cleaners, administrative staff, and generally a vast mix of voices from across the sector. We had a script which we took to each location and had LCC staff speak lines to camera. We also spent an hour at the HQ with two of their admin staff reading the script full so that we had a clean take that covered the full narrative. Most of our filming took place outdoors, so there were no complex lightings setups, instead we were keen to get creative with our use of action cameras, handheld footage and camera movement.
• Post-Production
  Because we were given free reign creatively, the edit changed shape a little in the early stages. Initially we took a fairly standard approach to the footage, splitting the video into departmental sections and keeping the shots fairly true to form. From there, we then added more experimental elements such as stop motion style portrait stills, film grain and vintage frame aspect ratios. The more stylised sections were generally used in line with VO and visuals that pushed some of the more emotive references to people across the team. This helped heighten a sense of personality and relatability to workforce as we see them in the edit going about their daily roles. Throwing in the short sequences of stills, adding in more sound design and cutting the VO around the musical cues helped give the edit more punch and a pacier feel throughout.

The Results
The video has been used for LCCs recruitment since production both internally and externally. It’s received positive feedback from various sources as detailed below in Hayley’s testimonial.

We’ve used the LCC video at Manto as a go-to reference for many projects and client wins since. It’s generally used to support proposals/pitches for recruitment style videos as well as being regularly included as a supporting reference for brand stories and corporate videos where the client is keen to steer away from explainer or presenter lead content.

Key Highlights
We were really keen to steer this video away from the fairly dry content you’d typically expect to see in a recruitment film. This team at LCC were brilliant in giving us such a breadth of creative control.

We worked with staff from a wide variation of departments and from a diverse mix of backgrounds, which genuinely represented the workforce within LCC.
Building the edit around the scripted VO, with a huge variation of voices really gave the piece the personality it needed.

Scheduling – with so many locations and so many people involved the scheduling from Hayley and the team at LCC was essential in pulling off such a fast paced shoot.

“The Team at Manto were fantastic to work with from supporting with formulation of the brief, the script and spending time understanding the business and key messages we wanted to get across. They were flexible with the shoot and happy to travel to different locations. The end product was exactly what we were looking for and the team were happy to have us involved in the edits, nothing was too much trouble. We use the video to promote the service and have had lots of positive feedback internally and externally on how it is received.”
— Hayley Thackwray, Service Manager, Leeds City Council