Stories
News, project launches and thoughts from our team.
Project AMPLIFI : St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton
When it comes to telling a story or delivering a message – healthcare communications professionals often have a delicate balance to strike. They need to deliver grand, complex visions to an incredibly broad audience (think: doctors, care workers, patients & families) …all at the same time.
We recently had the pleasure of working with St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton on this piece for their province-wide initiative, Project AMPLIFI. With a snappy script and vibrant brand-aligned animation – we explained their guiding vision, underlying intention and ground-breaking technology in a way that’s easy to understand. The results speak for themselves.
This approach has struck that perfect balance, helping the St. Joe’s comms team create a message that’s more effective, engaging and understandable – across every audience! Do you need a hand with your next #healthcare campaign? It’s our specialty! Reach out : roz@doublebarrelstudios.com :) #animation #technology #communications #publicrelations
Organization Overview
Recently Double Barrel Studios contributed our services to The Equestrian Association for the Disabled or T.E.A.D., an organization focused on enhancing the quality of life for children and adults with disabilities through equestrian therapy.
T.E.A.D. was interested in producing a video that would convey the importance of T.E.A.D. and highlight the massive team of dedicated volunteers that help to keep this program running. This is a cause that we feel very passionate about and over the years the members of their team have become great friends of ours, so when they approached us we immediately got to work.
Our approach was to produce a vignette style video that would show the amazing things that T.E.A.D. does for disabled youth. During our time with T.E.A.D. our dedication to the project only grew as we learned how important this program is to the individuals and families involved. It takes over 200 volunteers per year to keep things moving, and to care for the specially trained horses that can remain gentle and calm in unpredictable environments.
After spending time at the farm, speaking with some of the riders and their families and the incredible team that run the organization, we couldn’t be happier to be launching this piece & we hope that it raises awareness to the cause.
If you’re interested in getting involved with T.E.A.D. you can give them a call at 905-679-8323 ext. 222 or visit their website at www.tead.on.ca
Organization Overview
There’s something so special about telling the story of a team that really goes out of its way to care for people. There’s a genuineness, a depth of character that the camera seems to magnify.. and it’s always a beautiful thing.
At Double Barrel, we’ve been lucky to create content for a variety of healthcare organizations. In all honesty, its one of our favourite industries to work with.
We met the Hamilton Family Health Team in the middle of May. They were in need of a mandate-driven video – one that would set the tone for a series of visioning exercises at this year’s AGM.
Under tight timelines we dove quickly into the project, filming at numerous locations around the city to showcase the breadth of the Health Team’s work. From mental health running groups for teenagers to cooking classes for diabetics, to film therapy classes for the general public. We documented as much as we could in the few days that we had, knowing that it would be impossible to show every facet of the impact the Hamilton Family Health Team has on our community.
Ultimately, this piece hit its mark, showcasing the diversity of approach and the warmth of the organization. It’s a video that everyone is wonderfully proud of – and from what we hear – went off smashingly at the AGM!
Thanks so much to the team at HFHT for allowing us to peek behind the curtain, it was our pleasure to shed some light on your fantastic organization.
Program Overview
In 2011, 747,000 Canadians were living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias – that’s 14.9 per cent of Canadians 65 and older. Which means that sadly, chances are high that you know someone who has suffered, or is currently suffering from these diseases.
As our population ages, these numbers are only climbing. The Alzheimer’s Society of Canada has estimated that if nothing changes by 2031, this figure will increase to 1.4 million.
In Canada, AGE Inc. has set out to provide humanistic, patient-centred care for people living with dementia. Their curriculum, GPA or Gentle Persuasive Approaches, provides a broad-based educational experience for caregivers treating people afflicted with dementias, allowing these front-line workers to truly connect with the person beneath the disease. It is a novel approach, and one that has had huge success within Canada.
For the 10-year anniversary of the AGE curriculum, the team asked us to create a mini-documentary about the program. We were so pleased to be a part of the celebration for such an important organization. And by the end of our video screening, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.
To the staff at AGE Inc. ~ thank you for including us! We were so happy to tell your story. Here’s to another 10 years of success!
Original Educational Series
For people who have recently been diagnosed with cancer, one of the first challenges is overcoming the amount of information that exists when it comes to care and treatment options. In the digital age, opinions are everywhere, and sorting through them to discover which are accurate and which are bunk can be an overwhelming task.
At Double Barrel, we’ve all lost loved ones to cancer. So when Wayne MacPhail of the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer approached us with an innovative way of educating patients about how to separate the wheat from the chaff we were thrilled.
This was a unique project as Wayne came to us with concept in hand. CPAC wanted to create an online educational series that was dramatic, comedic – and demanding. In fact, the entire piece depended on a pitch-perfect embodiment of our two leads, Franny & Zooey, two 12-year-old budding scientists. Knowing that we needed rock-solid talent, we decided to reach out to ACTRA. For web series this can seem daunting, but their fantastic industry liasons walked us through the process effortlessly. Our two actresses – Chelsea Okyere and Zoe McGarry came in prepared and ready, doing such an amazing job in the audition that we ended up using their second rehearsal take in the completed video.
The final piece is everything we had hoped to achieve, and definitely goes into the Double Barrel vault as one of the most original concepts we’ve executed. Says MacPhail, “It was a pleasure (as always) working with Double Barrel on this project. From our first conversation about the unusual concept they got it and brought a ton of creative value to the end product. This is the type of idea, as we said in the meetings “that had a hundred ways to fail”. But, through casting, direction, animation and post-production, they didn’t let any of them happen. The result is delightful.”
We’re excited to see where this goes. Thanks for inviting us along, Wayne!
