Leeds Analytic Secure Environment for Research (LASER)

Client: University of Leeds
Project: Introducing the LASER platform

The Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) at the University of Leeds, commissioned us to produce a video that could be distributed online and through their internal channels, to bring awareness and engagement towards their online data security platform – Leeds Analytic Secure Environment for Research (LASER). LASER is a platform for storing data and research, and is extremely valuable for researchers who might need to archive and access very sensitive information. LIDA wanted to present LASER to the wider public, offering the viewer an idea of its capabilities, its potential applications, and the resource and support available to the user.

The LASER platform is based on the user having complete trust in the system, and the video format, therefore, needed to acknowledge this and ensure the topic was treated with the correct tone and creative approach. Any levity or utilising the wrong filming style or creative approach might undermine the subject matter. It seemed appropriate in this instance to stick with a talking-heads format, so that the contributors and stakeholders involved, could explain LASER’s functionality clearly and succinctly, without too many visual distractions or gimmicks.

As it was a complex subject matter, pre-interviews with contributors took place, which allowed the Producer/Director on the shoot the opportunity to filter and amend the direction of questioning in advance of the filming day. This streamlined approach to the questioning meant that the video production team did not ‘overshoot’ the interviews (where you collect too much content to be able to squeeze it into a short-duration film).

As LASER is essentially a computer-based platform within a secure environment, we were limited in the cutaway scenes that we could film, so visuals were complemented with stock footage and motion graphics in the final edit. The scope of our video production work included several shorter social media edits, created for the university’s owned media channels, designed to bring eyes and ears towards the longer edit.