Powerful online video from a refugee NGO using ingenious film techniques

Film can be at its best when switching the lightbulb on above viewers’ heads, perhaps making them think a little differently about a controversial topic. That’s exactly what this online video does, drawing on deceptively simple but genuinely ingenious filmmaking methods. The argument of the film’s sponsor, Refugee Action, is for refugee access to English teaching services. While its use of celebrity endorsement (the eloquent final words of actor Juliet Stevenson) is a tried-and-true technique since time immemorial, what precedes it is strikingly original.

The main body of the film consists of refugees – as played by actors – filmed against a blank background and speaking to camera a script drawing on a complex word-scrambling system, which pulls us from their initial challenging struggles with the English language through increasing fluency to their full, rich participation in British society.

It’s a brilliant example of a how a clever filmmaking concept, executed with confident simplicity, can in just two minutes create a sort of accelerated learning process for viewers that’s both informative and emotionally affecting.

The producers responsible for that concept and execution are creative video agency Brickwall whose online video work has run the gamut of clients from Greenpeace to Experian to the NSPCC and from BBC Bitesize to multiple parts of the NHS.