Kol Koreh's My Voice
We produced a music video to raise awareness of Kol Koreh, an NPO that advocates for children with learning disabilities. With our use of light, color and camera movement, we created an emotionally powerful film. Within a month of its release we saw over 30k views.
CHALLENGE
Towards the beginning of 2015, Rinat Green, the executive director of the Israel-based NPO Kol Koreh, reached out to us. Kol Koreh advocates for children with learning disabilities. Rinat explained that Kol Koreh was looking for an outside-the-box way to fundraise: a music video. We agreed with Rinat that this idea had the potential to take their organization to the next level, gaining international recognition and enough funding to expand their programing throughout Israel.
PROCESS
With our mission defined, we went to work creating a ‘viral music video.’ We concentrated our efforts on raising awareness of Kol Koreh’s main issue: dyslexia. The goal of this video was not to explain the nature of dyslexia, which is at this point a well-understood condition. There were no graphs or charts. Instead, we took this as an opportunity to convey the emotional reality of a dyslexic child’s struggle in the classroom. We created a video that would resonate with viewers, connect with them and get them invested in and involved with the cause in a lasting way.
The language of video produces an emotional charge with thousands of tiny visual and auditory cues; the use of light, the color palette, and the camera movement work together to establish a mood and build an atmosphere. We utilize these tools subtly, so the audience isn’t likely to pick up on such details consciously – but they will experience their impact on an instinctual level.
For our music video, we kept the viewer’s attention on the main characters with our use of color saturation, contrasting them with everyone else around them to ensure that they popped in every scene. At the same time, this created a sense of alienation and insecurity – these children were outsiders, standing out from their classmates in an obvious way.
This feeling was compounded by our use of light. The film started out bright and sunny, but inside the classroom, we shifted to darker tones that expressed the tension and anxiety that the dyslexic students associated with their time in school. We heightened this experience by keeping the camera still or using very mechanical movements that suggested rigidity and strain. Outside the classroom, on the other hand, we made use of more organic, handheld movement, generating a feeling of openness to discovery and creativity.
RESULTS
Rinat Green summed up the result best:
“I was standing, watching people watching the video, for the very first time… by the second verse already there was not a dry eye on the room… It created the impact we were looking for. And I saw right away the video was going to be a success.
“In the first month of its release we had over 30k views. I had people calling me from all over Israel that had watched the video, telling me that it has affected them… I had someone contact me from London… It’s incredible, the reaction from everyone. It's a tremendous tool.
“Josh and his team completely nailed the project.”
