For its 10th anniversary, Global Citizen wanted to show what a decade of campaigning had changed – and it had twelve weeks to do it. Its members had taken more than 30 million actions over ten years, and the films had to make that impact visible on the festival stage and on the ABC broadcast.

We mobilized local production teams in India, Nigeria, Colombia, and the U.S. to produce a series of films, each covering one Global Citizen campaign: water and sanitation in India, polio eradication in Nigeria, education for refugee children in Colombia, and COVID-19 response.

With separate crews in different countries, the films still had to look and feel like one series. Before any team went to a project site, we developed a single creative vision and visual approach and walked each team through it so everyone started on the same page. Every interview used the same direct-to-camera format, and we directed post-production ourselves so the finished films matched.

The films played on the festival stage and on the ABC broadcast, and later moved to Global Citizen’s own sites. Shown here: the water and sanitation film, featuring Chris Martin of Coldplay.

Client: Global Citizen
Director: Ben Johnson
Producer: Mimi McCormick

Lakeside Book Company, formerly R.R. Donnelley, launched a major rebrand. The new name had to carry decades of trust, and customers needed to know the people and standards behind North America’s largest book manufacturer had not changed.

As part of the rebrand led by Human, we presented Lakeside with two directions: a film driven by scripted narration, and a film built from employee testimonial soundbites. They asked for both, so we combined them. The result honors Lakeside’s legacy and shows the care its team puts into making books that readers around the world enjoy and keep.

Client: Lakeside Book Company
Director: Ben Johnson
Producer: Mimi McCormick