Last year Gas Street Works created all of the case study videos for the awards ceremony, and also this ‘bum settler’ graphics introduction for the event. This was designed to kick off the show with a bang and to build anticipation in the large audience of education sector professionals in attendance.

The visual cues were taken from the event branding as provided to us by the client. We worked with this by animating supplied photography and a suitable music track which ensured that the event was launched with a real bang.

The aim of the films was to expose students to key occupational sectors related to the BSF programme, enabling them to make a more informed choice for their future careers. One of the occupations (Architect) is shown above, however the DVD also included similar films on professions including IT Technician, Designer, Accountant and Health and Safety Officer.

The DVD is currently being used by schools, careers advisers, teachers and work related co-ordinators and employers. The DVD will help demystify and clarify the world of work and generate ideas and optimism about the variety of occupations and careers open to young people specifically through the BSF programme.

The key to our approach was familiarity and credibility. For this reason, the DVD solely consisted of real people telling real stories, in a language that our audience instantly believes and understands. The stories are told in an appropriate visual way, using modern graphics and music to enhance the messages.

Mathletics was a 2009 BETT award-winning maths website which allows children to compete internationally in all aspects of maths. The school got into mathletics initially as a pilot and about two years ago they took it on full time. The kids absolutely love it, all of the children from nursery all the way up to year six get involved and enjoy the challenge.

What they found was that the children who were feeling insecure about learning and didn’t like to put their hand up because they may look silly or get the answer wrong – they felt very secure in front of a computer as the computer is not judging them. And although the teacher is the facilitator and directs the learning, the children engage with it whatever they are doing with growing independence.

The council is committed to raising levels of attainment in all tiers of education. Many of the city’s secondary schools are providing excellent results, despite having to struggle with outdated buildings and facilities, and the £45bn Building Schools for the Future programme represents a fantastic opportunity for the council to rebuild or refurbish its schools.

The budget was low, so we improvised by using a small number of filming days and photography supplied by the client, which meant that we could deliver an engaging film for a fraction of the cost that would normally be required for a film of this nature.

Gas Street Works were commissioned to produce a film which communicates the benefits of FITS to education professionals. The brief was that the video had to engage, motivate and inspire viewers to see the benefits of FITS and encourage take up through the engagement with peers’ recommendations and positive experiences.

We achieved this by producing a motion graphics enhanced film which addressed two specific target audiences:

- Schools (Heads, Senior Leaders & Technicians) – the aim was to encourage them to implement FITS in their establishment. Initially this will take the form of contacting Becta for information about how to proceed.

- Local Authority Education Departments – the aim was to encourage Local Authorities to contact Becta, enrol on our FITS Train the Trainer Courses and assist implementation of FITS at their schools.

The College commissioned Gas Street Works to produce this short, music led piece which offered an entertaining and visual insight into their excellent work in developing leaders of the future.

Each video was produced to complement the website’s written case studies and bring alive how some schools are implementing the functional skills agenda within the new secondary curriculum. The films were designed to inspire teachers and demonstrate its wider applicability, whilst meeting the aims of engaging, challenging, motivating and inspiring viewers to see how the new curriculum offers opportunities.

In 2009, we recapped the journey of the VRE programme’s development from the Phase 1 DVD (which was also produced by Gas Street Works), taking a look at how the pilots were developing in Phase 2. The challenge was to research, script, storyboard and ultimately bring to life creatively the academic applications of the VRE programme through film, inspiring viewers to investigate further and consider the application of the principles in their own work. To achieve this, we filmed over 4 days to capture case studies on four different VRE applications, which were: Collaborative Research Events on the Web, VRE for the Study of Documents and Manuscripts, VRE for Archaeology (or VERA) and MyExperiment (which focused on how social networking could enhance research).