Modelling Future Tempos for Complex Policy – Layers of change

Client: University of Warwick
Project: Modelling Future Tempos for Complex Policy ‘Layers of change’

Dr Emma Uprichard from The Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies was looking for a way to demonstrate research impact and raise awareness of the social science research project that she was working on. Her aim was to provoke questions and open a dialogue to other academics in the field of social sciences and utilise a video as part of her research excellence framework (REF) submission.

For this project we were tasked with producing two university research communications videos. However, due to Covid-19 filming restrictions there was no possibility of any on-location filming or interviews taking place. We therefore needed a creative solution that enabled us to deliver the client’s objectives and show research impact, whilst remaining fully compliant with the university’s filming guidelines during the pandemic. Our solution was to put the production budget to best use by sourcing all video clips from online stock-footage libraries and to combine this with our creative editing techniques to produce two engaging, contemporary-looking research films.

The research topic was around developing data science methods that capture multiple and complex temporalities (e.g. speed, shape, direction, momentum of change) that are necessary to design successful social policy planning and decision-making; so with a topic as complex as this, the first step was for our copywriter to work hand-in-hand with the client to fully understand these concepts and their implications so that he could then begin working on creating two voice over scripts; one titled ‘Layers of Change’ and another titled ‘Multiple Rhythms’.

Once both scripts were signed off, we began conceptualising the research themes and noted down any potential buzz-words that best visualised the concepts within the scripts. These buzz words were then used as a basis for searching for online stock footage until we had a bank of shots that we could take into the edit and begin crafting our films.

The final outcome are two stylised research impact films that we are incredibly proud of and best of all, come with glowing praise given by our client.

“I’m so happy with these! Thank you so much and thank you to the entire team involved. It’s been wonderful working with all of you on them. You’ve been amazing!”

Dr Emma Uprichard
University of Warwick