Here are some examples of editing interviews into compelling narratives, using a variety of techniques:

‘The Pianist of Yarmouk’ was co-directed and edited by Elliot Manches. It mixes archive footage with interview and animation, to tell the story of Aeham Ahmad: a classically-trained musician attempting to escape the war in Syria for safety in Europe. Through the film, which will be screened at Cannes next month, we’ve also been raising funds for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). This film is in Arabic with English subtitles.

This is an older video we edited, where the World Association of Girl Guides & Girl Scouts sent us footage from all over the world, of their members explaining what being a part of WAGGGS meant to them. Much of the footage was shot on mobile phones. We conformed the footage and organised clips into a coherent structure, with titles setting up each section, and slightly animating still images to bring the soundbites to life.

The Arts Council funded a ‘Cultural Citizens Programme’ to promote arts and culture to young people who would not normally have access or an interest. We visited one of the pilot areas to find out: what was it like being on the programme, what were its impacts, and how could it be improved? We used upbeat music for this video, with some ‘0n-trend’ animated text to help bring the video to life.

Leonard Cheshire runs residential homes across the UK for people with disabilities. Through a ‘co-production’ approach, their ‘Future Choices’ programme aimed to increase residents’ choice and control, and so improve the standard of care in their homes. As such, the client wanted to know: how well did their ‘person-centred’ process run, and what were the impacts? We visited one home, Athol House, three times. Once during their group workshop, then some months later to observe the resulting activities, with a final visit for more in-depth follow-up interviews. We used simple animated text that matched our client’s branding, along with appropriate music to set an inspirational tone.

We worked with several young people who have lived in temporary housing, to understand what life has been like for them, and come up with a respectful and effective way to communicate their experiences. To protect the young people’s privacy, no faces are shown. But the voices you hear are not performed, they’re from authentic interviews with the participants, who also helped out on set for the filming as part of a ‘co-production’ process. For maximum traction, we titled the video ‘Thousand of British Children Live Like This’, and the film was shown to MPs at The House of Commons last October.