Wednesday night kicked off our production of a charity project we’ve been hinting about for the last week. This is an exciting event for Bold Content, because the project focuses on an important social topic: de-stigmatising mental health. We have partnered with the charity CALM, or Campaign Against Living Miserably, for this effort. Our in-house director, James, along with our CALM collaborator, Paul, had two exciting days of filming in the London Live studios while interviewing multiple sets of grooms and their best man.
As discussed in our previous production diary post, the aim of this campaign is to bring attention to the idea you can act like a best man at other times in your life other than just at a wedding. Men don’t need to wait for key life moments to be supportive and caring: if you know your mate is going through a tough time, or if he isn’t acting like himself, you can offer a helping hand–it’s what a best man would do.
Our main video is designed to highlight the witty banter that men are familiar with, but it will also show just how unpracticed men are at opening up. Once we’ve highlighted the problem, we will offer a practical solution in the second video, which will sit on the CALM website as an avenue for people to explore further if they wish. The second video will feature an actor speaking to the camera, while the first will feature our interviews.
One of the most interesting things about the shoot was how comfortable men are when good-naturedly making fun of each other, but when it came to telling their best mate how much they mean to them, they become very awkward. In modern western culture, it’s just not something that men discuss. This can lead to problems when people are feeling down or lonely. Men generally reserve the ‘nice stuff’ for the best man speech at a wedding.
We’ll keep updating through post-production, and we are excited to share the final product!
You can check out how we initially met up with CALM in this blog article.