✊ ss4c strike launch video

After the ferocious Black Summer bushfires in Australia, the public was energised for Australian government leaders to take swift and decisive action. For School Strike 4 Climate’s upcoming strike on May 15, I was tasked to create an engaging and sharable launch ad to promote the action. Building of the success of the September 20 strikes, it was supposed to show our power as well as what we were fighting for, with strong imagery of the bushfires.

As part of the development process, I decided early on to match the ad to music. Montaigne, an Australian musician, was particularly supportive of the school strikes, and their song “Ready” had already become a sort of anthem for the Climate Movement. With her permission, we used the song as the theme for the strike. The song had to be edited down to hit the right beats and timing for the less than one minute ad.

We were in a unique position for this strike, as we were watching the effects of climate change play out across Australia, and be widely reported on. Utilising news audio grabs over footage of the Black Summer fires and smoke created an engaging start to the video that immediately hooked the viewer.

The final section of the video is what I was most proud of at the time. The transition from the impacts section to the strike section works really well (ignoring the quite shaky footage used there), and the timing of the videos to the music took ages to perfectly line up. It really shows the size of the movement, and gives me chills to this day.

Sourcing the video content for this advertisement was difficult. As the fires were still ongoing (they would not be extinguished until March), limited high quality footage of the event existed apart from watermarked news grabs, which I wanted to avoid. Additionally, I wanted to only use footage from the current fires to avoid any criticism (right wing commentators and newspapers were particularly ferocious at the time). To collate enough footage, as well as receive the necessary copyright approval, I had to reach out to dozens of content orgs and NGO’s, as well as use extremely specific google search techniques.

The video was also designed with the intention to create a bold hero image with the strike narrative at the end, which was also replicated on social media and the SS4C website.

If I had the opportunity to remake the video with the experience I have now, I would definitely adjust the use of text in the middle portion, as I feel that it has the opportunity to be more impactful and engaging.

Overall however, I’m extremely happy with the way that the video turned out, and it received substantial engagement and views across social networks. Sadly it was not utilised for as long as it could, as the outbreak of COVID-19 caused the strike to be cancelled.