Stories

News, project launches and thoughts from our team.

David Braley Primary Care Research Collaborative

Every day, thousands of primary care providers head to the front lines of healthcare in Canada.

They’re by our sides for moments big and small – motivated by a singular vision : to help everyone lead happier, healthier lives.

At McMaster, healthcare is in our DNA. 50 years ago, our medical school revolutionized healthcare education.

And for over a decade, the Department of Family Medicine has been reimagining primary care research – providing critical insights, and pushing toward a brighter world for us all.

Introducing – the David Braley Primary Care Research Collaborative. An incubator, focussed on advancing and strengthening primary care in Canada.

The Collaborative is for everyone – from experienced researchers to primary care clinicians looking to start. Bring your question to us, and work with expert faculty & highly trained staff to find the answers. With supports for capacity development, mentorship and networking in research – our aim is to light the pathways to discovery, whether your question is big or small.

In Canada, healthcare is more than an occupation. It’s a calling. Help solve tomorrow’s challenges today. Be a part of the David Braley Primary Care Research Collaborative. Working together, we’ll reimagine primary care – for better health and a brighter world.

LGBTQ Healthcare

This mini-documentary examines the pressing need for LGBTQ healthcare strategy within the primary care setting. It explores the steps the Hamilton Family Health Team is taking to ensure its physicians and providers are well-educated and leading the charge. Produced for launch at the Association of Family Health Teams of Ontario conference in October 2018.

Campus Stories: Recruitment Video Series

Choosing a university is one of the most difficult decisions a young person will make. For pre-med students, a top quality educational experience needs to combine with other elements, like practicum and research opportunities, to be considered truly well-rounded.

McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine is renowned for educational and research excellence. With campuses in Waterloo, Niagara and Downtown Hamilton, virtually every type of educational and practicum opportunity is possible. This creates a marketing challenge all its own – with so many options, how do you adequately showcase the program to potential students? In such a hugely competitive post-secondary market, how do universities stand out?

At Double Barrel, we are grateful to have a long history with McMaster. We were thrilled when the outreach department at the DeGroote School of Medicine got in touch. We love having the opportunity to showcase what makes programs unique – and this was a particularly interesting challenge.

After multiple creative discussions with the team leads from each region, we honed in on one simple fact: the experiences that McMaster’s medical program offers are as unique as the students themselves. Each undergraduate can mix and match the program options to best suit them, their particular specialization and career goals. This is where we took our inspiration.

Through individual student stories, we highlighted specific regions, campuses and the practicum opportunities that exist within. Our three students – Steven Huynh (Hamilton), Kaylyn Merrifield (Waterloo) and Barbara Tatham (Niagara) were followed from home to classroom to work placements, while their personal narratives describe why they feel particularly drawn to the medical profession. The resulting video vignettes are personal, emotive and uniquely entertaining, highlighting just how varied your experience can be through the Michael G. DeGroote School.

Says Program Coordinator Lea Matulovic, “Roz, Lee and the entire Double Barrel Studios team made working on this dynamic project a great experience. They were extremely organized and provided us with the flexibility required to capture a vast variety of individuals and locations. Their professional, yet fun approach made for easy collaboration and their expertise; creativity; and willingness to understand and meet their client’s needs resulted in a finished product that exceeded our expectations!”

Thanks to the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine for bringing us on board!

Small Business Story

Clients come to us for all sorts of different reasons when they’re considering adding video to their online presence. In the case of Sim Kalsi, owner of RSK Automotive & Collision it was a brand rethink and refresh that set the wheels in motion. And as it turns out – he had quite the story to tell.

RSK has called Hamilton home for 6 years. Their new tagline “Built By Hamilton” speaks volumes of their dedication to the people of #HamOnt. With a long family history in local automotive repair, Sim has built a reliable and trusted brand featuring a team of skilled technicians with a passion for the steel city.

With a strong narrative lead by the team at RSK paired with glowing customer testimonials from some seriously happy folks in the neighbourhood, Double Barrel Studios put together one of our signature business profile documentaries, highlighting their many unique offerings. RSK truly stands out as a friendly neighbourhood auto body shop providing fair and accurate estimates and excellent customer service.

Thanks for letting us expand your story Sim!

Company Documentary

When you’re a national brokerage with teams in hundreds of Canadian cities, how do you even begin to capture the spirit of the hard working brokers representing your brand? In the case of INVIS/Mortgage Intelligence, the answer was simple. You go to them. With a camera crew in tow.

Over the summer of 2016, the Double Barrel team was thrilled to film across Canada, documenting the passion and the people behind the INVIS/Mortgage Intelligence brand. In one of our most ambitious documentary projects to-date, we filmed in six provinces and seven cities, capturing the camaraderie that makes INVIS/MI truly unique. From wineries in Kelowna, to line dancing at the Calgary Stampede, from charity golf tournaments in Niagara to boat cruises off the Halifax harbour. Through it all, what stood out the most was an overwhelming sense of community and caring. Brokers that truly care for their clients, and each other, working exceedingly hard to ensure their happiness.

Double Barrel is thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with Invis/Mortgage Intelligence, documenting this beautiful country and their world class teams from coast to coast to coast.

This completed piece screened at the INVIS/MI annual gathering, to rave reviews. And it’s easy to see why! Invis Mortgage Intelligence has successfully built the only true full service brokerage in Canada, attracting top brokers that are continually diversifying and developing their craft to deliver the best support possible. That’s something to cheer about.

Employer Stories

Living Wage Hamilton is an organization that advocates to employers and helps to raise awareness about the importance of providing a living wage; a wage that provides enough for employees to cover basic every-day expenses. The challenge for Living Wage Hamilton is to offset the perceived financial challenge for businesses with the benefits that they will derive from adopting a living wage policy.

To help businesses better understand those benefits, Living Wage Hamilton contracted Double Barrel Studios to produce a short series of videos highlighting local Living Wage employers.

The videos feature Living Wage Hamilton employers such as Cake & Loaf Bakery, The Mustard Seed Co-op & provided us with an opportunity to contribute our own experience at Double Barrel Studios as a living wage employer.

For creative professions, wages often fall below the living wage threshold and that sometimes means finding additional work outside of the field to make ends meet. For Double Barrel Studios offering a living wage allows for our busy team of directors, producers, editors and writers to dedicate 100% of their efforts into providing the best experience when we work with our clients.

We already recognized the importance of providing a Living Wage & just like the other employers that we interviewed we also feel that it plays a vital role in the long term success of a company. It was a new experience for us having to be the interviewee’s but we were honoured to have the chance to speak about something that we feel is an important cause for our great city!

Visit https://livingwagehamilton.ca/ & join the conversation!

Promotional Vignettes

Hamilton is a city in the midst of renaissance. Nowhere is that more apparent than the downtown core, where new businesses are emerging at a breakneck pace. A new company cracks open its doors seemingly every single day.

At Double Barrel, we live and work downtown too. So when the International Village Business Improvement Area asked us to help tell their story, we jumped at the chance.

Our challenge was substantial. First: to showcase the changing face of the downtown core. Second: to spur interest and get people excited to pop downtown to shop.

Essentially, we wanted to get people out of their comfort zone and into these blossoming boutiques. Old habits die hard, and with so much going on for all of us on the daily, it’s just too easy to pass these new stores by. We admire the frontages but never actually venture inside, choosing instead to zip up to the cozy confines of our closest shopping mall.

Through the creation of 1:30 second vignettes, each one focusing on a different shop and story – we helped the International Village BIA show the greater public that the tapestry of the downtown core is changing. Every single entrepreneur has a story of their own to share, and a reason why for them – right now – downtown #HamOnt is the absolute best place to be.

Thanks to Susie Braithwaite and the International Village for inviting us to explore!

Broadcast Commercials

Hamilton is a city known for industry. But spend a little time within our borders and you’ll find there’s much more to this community than that.

So when the City of Hamilton approached us to produce a series of broadcast commercial spots highlighting the lesser known lifestyle benefits of living in #HamOnt.. we were thrilled. Thrilled at the opportunity to show you the city through our eyes. From rural charms and outdoor adventures to world class restaurants, arts and culture – these spots are our homage to the city we call home.

We filmed these spots over three days in a variety of Hamilton hotspots – from James Street to Cootes Paradise and everywhere in between. Featured are local farms, fashion designers, fitness enthusiasts, chefs and their fanbase of foodies. Chances are good you know someone in each frame.

Many thanks to the City of Hamilton, Tourism Hamilton and Hamilton Economic Development for bringing us aboard this project!

Special thanks to location providers (and amazing Hamilton restaurants!) Mezcal, Aberdeen Tavern, Nellie James Too and to intrepid foodie Chanry Thach!!

Arts & Culture spot shoutouts: Dave Brennan, Hamilton Arts Awards, Max @ True Hamiltonian, Angela DeMontigny of DeMontigny Boutique!

30 Second Broadcast & Theatrical Commercial

Engineering is the invisible thread that holds so much of our day-to-day lives together. And when it comes to getting teens excited about a STEM career – it pays to reveal just a bit of the science behind their everyday experiences.

We set out in October of 2014 to create a 30 second broadcast commercial that did just that. Using skateboarding as our metaphor – and an extreme slow motion camera – we aimed to capture the forces of friction, momentum and gravity.

The end result is something we’re all so proud of. Screened in theatres from Hamilton to Toronto (in IMAX no less!) and also in Calgary, we hear this piece is on its way to theatres in Hong Kong!

Many thanks to our amazing crew, as always. Shot in slow-mo by Ty Tekatch and Christoph Benfey, with animation assistance from Antenna Visual Communication. Edited by Taylor Heres. Starring skateboarding superstar Alishia Stevens. Many thanks to New Line Skateparks for allowing us to shoot at their construction site in Oshweken, Ontario!!

Commercial Trailer

Today’s engineering graduates have a tough job ahead of them. From water quality to sustainable living, from climate change to aging infrastructure, the engineering classes of 2015 and beyond will be expected to have the skills necessary to tackle the grand challenges of tomorrow.

The W Booth School of Engineering Practice provides recent grads with that skill set, through interdisciplinary education combined with experiential learning and mentorship. Their tagline: “Inspiring innovative leaders who will transform the world.”

No small task.

When the W Booth School came to us for help with their new commercial, we were excited to get involved. Double Barrel has a long history with McMaster’s Engineering department, but we hadn’t had the opportunity to work with the Master’s program. We knew that this would be a particularly tricky project – within a tight timeframe, showcase the depth and breadth of experiences and opportunities a W Booth graduate would attain.

After much discussion, we decided to go with a combination of green screen, animation and live action in-the-field footage.

After one particularly long shoot day with an amazing team of W Booth Graduates, our animator Taylor Heres set to work in the edit suite. Sketching, animating and keying out the green under the guidance of director Tyler Tekatch. We couldn’t be happier with the end result.

Many thanks to the W Booth School for involving us in such a great project!

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