Vans: All in: the mind
Charity Video Production
Joy Miessi
House of Vans and Mind Charity joined forces to create their ‘All in: the mind’ exhibition. The concept? To create a series of 1 minute shorts to spotlight individual artists whose work explores or is affected by mental health. All four films had to be shot in the same day in four different locations around London.
Charity video production is a unique genre. It often deals with heavy subject matter that requires a delicate touch. That is to say, it’s much more aligned to documentary filmmaking than purely promotional content. Therefore when mixing the two it’s essential to be sensitive to both pace and tone. For this project, the added challenge was timing. However good planning paid off. It was a great shoot and a pleasure to have met so many up and coming inspiring creatives.
Here we meet Joy Miessi at her studio talking about how racism and sexism have affected her mental health.
See the rest of films from the set below…
If you interested in more content we’ve shot for House of Vans check our event page here.
James Massiah
The shoot with James Messiah was definitely a case of thinking on our feet. The ‘set’ was a spare room in James place of work and we had about 40 minutes before we were going to be kicked out! James of course was naturally very easy to work with and a dream to interview. So our only real challenge here was making the location look as interesting as possible given the limitations.
Thankfully we were blessed with great natural light entering the break room and being diffused through the windows. This created beautiful soft shadows that perfectly suited the mood. One of our favourites in the series!
Suz P
When approaching a serious subject like mental health your main goal as a filmmaker is to do justice to the story. The visuals need to compliment the narrative but can’t overwhelm or detract from the message. Once we’d interviewed Suz it was clear the best use of b-roll would be to just shoot Suz in her natural environment. Flicking through her archive of work at her studio and scrolling through her latest project of brain scans. Sometimes keeping it simple is the most striking thing to do.
Diana Chire
We shot Diana at her apartment right at the end of the day. The sun streaming through the blinds made finding interesting angles a real breeze. All in all, it was the simplicity of the shoot that allowed the content of the interview to take centre stage.