OUP’s research showed the ELT community, and their customers, are moved by human success stories – so we knew we needed to base the films around the perspectives of learners and teachers, milestones of learning, achievements, and the ways English can transform lives.

We developed a suite of films in response to the brief – a flagship, 2 minute promotional film to ‘win hearts and minds’, which was also delivered as a 60 second short version for social media. This was a scripted film following characters on their English language journeys, which depicted different and diverse learners with different motivations. To accompany this short film telling the story of how learning English transforms lives, we also created a set of 90 second interview-led films, which explore the English language learning and teaching experiences of worldwide learners and teachers. 

OUP needed to reflect some of their key markets – so we developed a production solution which involved a small crew of just four of us filming in London, Madrid, Istanbul and Santiago in Chile. OUP could get us access to real English students to film in real learning environments – like a university in Istanbul, and language schools in Chile and Spain – but the shoot and resulting film used a hybrid approach which also involved actors so the main promo film hit a high enough production value. Producer/director Jo invested time into storyboarding, and working with the very talented DoP Jim Petersen, to create a set of films with a high production value, commercial feel.