The films made for charities CLAPA and Sense have been accepted into separate categories and YOUR VOTE can help Green Lady Media get them shortlisted as finalists.
Who is Green Lady Media?
Rachel McManus left the BBC earlier this year after 17 years in programme-making and journalism to try and build a business working around her young family. She knew her skills lay in storytelling and using the power of video to try and make the world a better place. She’s worked on investigations which have put criminals behind bars for selling fake cancer therapies and exposed multi-million pound frauds.
“I know how influential video content is in social media, and how video content is expected as part of every business, charity and organisation’s basic offering. But – I also know people don’t generally have the budget required to produce lots of high-end video content.”
So Rachel set about developing a business proposal to produce affordable video content which is visually engaging and effective.
“People are the key to my films – I try to feature people actively doing something, to pull the viewer in – and I use graphics and captions to explain the key message – so my films can be watched on social media with the sound down if necessary.
Rachel wanted my films to be sharable too:
“I try to keep them short and snappy – research has shown how short people’s attention span is in social media. You’ve got to hook people in within a few seconds or you’ve lost them.”
The films Rachel made for CLAPA and Sense were done on a voluntary basis, when she was building up her portfolio and working out the best way to use the technology. They’ve been used by both charities to promote their causes.
The Head of Operations for Sense Cymru used a batch of films she made for them to showcase the charity’s work at the National Eisteddfod this year, and CLAPA shared the film on their website and social media.
“The videos have had fantastic feedback from clients of the charities and their families, and that means a lot to me, to know people are happy about how they’ve been portrayed and that the films are making a difference – especially when I’m working with vulnerable contributors, that’s where my public service training really kicks in.
Being nominated for the Charity Film Awards is fantastic in terms of raising the profile of what I do, and showing how relevant video content is for every organisation. My videos are up against films with budgets of thousands of pounds, so just getting through the nomination process is a massive achievement. It’s a public vote which dictates which films are shortlisted for the judges though, and every vote counts, so if anyone can spare a moment to support my films (they’re in separate categories, so you can vote for both!) I would be so grateful.”
You can vote for the films here:
The public vote is open until 15th December.