One common question charities have is whether animation or live action is better. In our latest charity video for Akshaya Patra we blended the two.

This charity video which was shot for Akshaya Patra, an Indian based charity, won a major advertising competition which saw the Bold Content team fly off to India to watch the sunrise over the Taj Mahal as part of the prize.

We were also privileged enough to visit Akshaya Patra’s HQ in Vrandivan.  Akshaya Patra is an organisation which aims to feed 5 million children by 2020.  More footage of this will follow shortly in a micro-documentary about their work.

We were inspired by the Akshaya Patra charity and developed the concept around some footage that we shot in Bangalore of a child on the streets begging for money.

We were touched by the plight facing the starving children on the streets of India and decided to create a commercial for the UK Market to highlight how privileged UK children are compared to their Indian counterparts.

Whilst our protagonist concerns herself with imaginary dolphins and interesting facts about space travel, she is set in stark contrast to a child across the road from her who is begging for food.

We used hand drawn animations to illustrate the childlike wonder of the little girl’s imagination so we see the dolphin and the spaceman from the point of view of her mind’s eye. The little begging girl also starts off as a mere figment of the girl’s imagination, however she soon becomes reality as we realise that she is not just imagining the fact that £10 can really turn a child’s life around, enabling them to stop worrying about how to feed themselves so they can concentrate on getting an education, thus breaking the cycle of poverty.

The directors aims were to inspire and move an audience into giving money rather than making them depressed.

We shot and gathered voice over in one day. Shots were gathered on several Canon DSLRs (5D MkII, 7D & 60D) which enabled us to use small cameras so as not to scare our child actress.  Edit and grading were completed using Avid and After Effects.

The Akshap Patra website states that their mission is:

Close to 13.5 million underprivileged children in India are out of school and into child labor in order to earn a single meal in a day. (Source: World Bank)

The surest way to break out of the cycle of poverty is through education. Education can significantly improve the quality of life of a family for generations to come. When the basic needs of a child, such as food are not met, education often becomes the last priority.

We are helping underprivileged children by providing them with a healthy, balanced meal that they would otherwise have to work for. The meal is an incentive for them to continue their education. It helps reduce the dropout rate to an enormous extent and increases classroom attendance.

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