Made with Bravery is the first official marketplace in Ukraine. It was created at the initiative of the IT company Evo. The main idea is that people from other countries can buy Made in Ukraine products from great Ukrainian brands here. What greatly motivated us is that part of the profits are donated to rebuild our country. [it's soooo awesome!]
And this is also a project we worked on with Banda Agency [not the first video we've created together]. Banda was involved in creating the marketplace and was responsible for communications. Together with Evo, they invited us to participate in a tender to create a video.
Task:
Made With Bravery is another element of the Bravery campaign Banda Agency launched in 2022.
So, when the agency approached us, they already had a general communication message and a scripted video. Our task was to propose a plan for implementing the script and show we could meet the deadline.
Idea:
We immediately jumped into the project. We wanted to create such an important video for Ukraine with our own hands [literally].
The idea of Banda is that when you buy something from Ukrainian brands, you put a brick in the rebuilding of Ukraine.
“Another brick on the wall” is the message of the campaign, and an illustrated guy building a city out of Ukrainian goods is the plot of our video. As a result, we had to create a craft video made in stop-motion with a combination of animation.
To present our vision, we shot the animatic right in our office. We showed how we envisioned the story's ending, how the goods would move in the video, how the main character would be animated, and what the city would look like.
Also… we could do most of the work independently, and we invited animators Roman Dzvonkovsky and Danylo Malyukha to work on stop-motion.
And yes, we won the tender!
So we were very happy!
Process:
Time for the main work.
We started with the location. All the actions in the video take place above the city. So we decided to refine it and make it more like the real thing.
We filled the city with details that make up our everyday life – adding roads, cars, markings, and traffic signs. We also added its inhabitants. Because what is a city without people? And also trees [there is a lot of greenery in the video, and we like it].
Even though our team was super skilled, we were worried about pitfalls. So, we wrote down all the problems we might encounter during the shoot or before the day of the shoot.
And the first pitfall we noticed was working with brands.
In our circles with Banda Agency, we heard about pretty expensive brands. Sometimes, you must cut, unscrew, or crush something for a successful stop-motion. And we were worried whether we could afford such a controversial thing.
For example, we wanted to cut up the bag at the beginning of the video.
But we changed our minds. We asked the brand to bring the materials from which it was made: fabric threads. And that's how we managed to save it! Yay!
But it didn't work out that way with the glasses. There was a whole separate story with them.
Yes, there was quite a story with the glasses! We were not happy with the way they moved in the frame. And in the end, we drilled a hole in them so that the mirrors would bounce the way we wanted them to.
But we appreciate that brands are fearless in making such sacrifices for the sake of video.
Filming:
A week of shooting with pre-lighting. Two locations. This is how you can describe the work with Made with Bravery. But we succeeded.
Victoria Suprun, producer:
“Are you satisfied with the video? I always want to improve something. You always want to sharpen it. To sit a little longer. Because one more edit and it will be at the top. But not with this video. We've done it right. So, the entire team is super happy with the result! Twenty people from our side alone were involved in the video. Together, we made a 36-second video and two 10-second videos. It's great that we could join and put our small brick in the Made With Bravery communication. It is very inspiring! And now that the president has posted our video, we can retire.
Result:
This video has gone genuinely viral!
6 million views and a post on Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Instagram page. So we want to do it again!
