From 900 year old harbours to world-renown chair designers, here is our pick of the latest in video communications. For more updates about #CommunicateLens, follow @Communicatemag on Twitter.

Aberdeen Harbour

Scotland’s main port for offshore energy, Aberdeen Harbour, worked with Scotland-based digital media production agency signal to create a film that would tell the story of their evolving relationship with the city, introduce their new identity, and set the tone for the next phase of their 900-year history. The series of movies celebrate Aberdeen’s diversity, brought by a constant flow of people throughout the city and harbour. To reflect this aim and cultural mix, the video includes multiple voices and faces, which generate emotional response and bring the audience on the next stage of Harbour’s journey. The video was developed using a combination of existing material signal had shot and new drone footage filmed during lockdown, which show half-empty streets, adding to the beauty of the city, while the different voice recordings were carried out remotely across the UK.

"Producing a film in the middle of a pandemic is a challenge. Just like everyone else we have had to reassess how we work remotely.  As a business, as in life, we need to find new ways to work and build relationships. We think the answer is to be even more creative, more collaborative and more authentic - hopefully with a few laughs along the way,” says signal’s creative director Mark Turner.

Billiani

Italian chair designer Billiani, created a two-minute video to celebrate its century-long family history, which began in 1911. The chair markers’ creation (when Italy was still not a united country) and its development throughout the years as the design world changed around it, is explained througouhly through the sole use of using kinetic typography animation. ‘Billiani chairs tell the story and the culture of its district,’ says the narrator in Italian, as we see cut-out, black and white pictures of the first chairs being produced. The video’s style is able to convey a century-long history in just over two minutes, without ever loosing the audiences’ attention. The quick sequence of images, cut-outs, text and narration highlights all the twists and turns the company underwent from 1911 until now: 1997, the year in which design became its language, 2002, when it officially debuts at the world renown Milan Furniture Fair and then 2019, when it hired the first woman artistic director. Meanwhile, it never fails to showcase the multitude of different chair design on offer, from Frisée to corolla

Sofidel

Sofidel, one of the world’s leading tissue paper producer, produced ‘Who we are,’ a two and a half minute video that celebrates the company’s decades of history and achievements. Currently, through its sustainable business model, Sofidel has expanded in 12 countries across the world, with a production capacity of more than 1 million tonnes of tissue paper per year. By using multiple video overlay with footage and text, the video provides a clear picture of the company’s values and mission: a piece of text reading ‘to use paper means hygiene, caring, harmony but also transparency and respect for employees, clients and partners’ is laid upon images of different across the world, from babies to adults, using tissue paper. This emphasises the importance of what Sofidel does, showing how, although never considered so, it is a basic necessity. Most of the video centres around the aspect the company is most proud of, its love for nature and commitment to sustainability. As the video explains the viewers, the forests used by Sofidel are all cellulose certified, and it uses the minimum amount of water necessary, facing climate change head on. ‘That’s why we choose a world where progress does not mean exploitation,’ reads the video.

We Are Tilt

Brighton-based creative agency We Are Tilt created ‘How do you make a film under Covid-19?,’ a six-minute video which explores the ways in which it is still possible to shoot and produce a movie while following the APA Covid-19 shooting guidelines. The video documents the production of Tilt’s latest movie shot under lockdown, filming artist Lois O’Hara. First and foremost, all pre-production was remote and digital with meeting via hangouts and staff was kept to a minimum, including a Covid-19 officer that ensured all was shot in safety. “She was just there watching us because as soon as you get out of shooting you just fall back into old habits (…) you start clustering,” says Dan Evans in an interview with KitPlus.

“By the process of doing it [the film] really does show you the blockers and it is good to know those before you go on a big client shoot. Everything takes a lot more time,” he adds.

As different people working on the movie narrate each step of the way in the video, the footage actually shows viewers what was going on, from which cameras were needed to achieve the best possible results to  how technicians sanitise the set. “I hope it’s useful to filmmakers and their clients alike as the film world emerges in slow motion- like cautious butterflies from their Covid cocoons,” writes Tilt head of film Dan Evans about the video.