CLIENT BRIEF
Ronald McDonald House Charities Victoria & Tasmania needed a range of video content to support upcoming campaigns and ongoing communications with its community.
The opportunity centred around a visit from AFL footballer Tom Stewart, who was spending time with families at Ronald McDonald House and supporting promotion of an AFL Grand Final campaign.
Rather than treating the visit as an opportunity to create just one video, Visual Culture worked with the RMHC team to make the most of the filming session.
Within only a few hours, we needed to capture campaign-specific content featuring Tom, genuine interactions with families, personal family stories and the experiences of volunteers.
The result would need to become multiple pieces of content, each with a different purpose and suitable for use across a range of social media channels.
OUR APPROACH
With a limited window available, planning was essential.
We worked closely with the RMHC marketing team to identify the different stories and campaign requirements before filming, allowing our crew to move efficiently between content throughout the session.
Some moments could be planned. Others couldn’t.
When Tom Stewart met families, our approach was deliberately observational – capturing genuine conversations, reactions and interactions as they happened rather than trying to overly direct the experience.
Alongside this, we captured dedicated pieces to camera with Tom promoting the Grand Final campaign, ensuring RMHC had clear campaign content that could sit alongside the more spontaneous footage from his visit.
Finding the Stories Within the Day
The filming session also gave us an opportunity to look beyond the immediate campaign.
We interviewed families about their experiences, creating more personal, story-led content that could help audiences understand the role Ronald McDonald House plays for families during challenging periods.
Volunteers were also invited to briefly share their experiences, providing another perspective on the people and community behind the organisation.
Each required a slightly different interview approach.
With family stories in particular, our role was to create a comfortable environment, listen carefully and allow people to tell their story in their own words.
It meant that within the same filming session we could move between campaign promotion, candid event coverage, personal storytelling and volunteer content – capturing a much broader picture of the organisation.
ONE FILMING SESSION. MULTIPLE ASSETS.
A major objective of the project was to maximise the value of the time everyone had available.
Rather than filming one hero video and leaving, we approached the session as an opportunity to build a library of content.
From only a few hours of production, the footage could be shaped into a series of individual videos – including campaign promotions, family stories, volunteer experiences and shorter social content.
That required thinking about the edit while we were still filming.
We needed to capture the right establishing footage, interactions, interview responses and supporting visuals so that each finished piece could stand on its own while still feeling part of the same campaign and organisation.
DESIGNED FOR SOCIAL
How the content would ultimately be viewed was considered from the beginning.
Visual Culture worked with RMHC’s marketing, brand and graphic design teams to ensure the videos reflected the organisation’s established visual identity.
The finished videos incorporated the appropriate branding, graphics and campaign messaging, creating consistency across a collection of content with very different stories.
We also delivered videos in horizontal, vertical and square formats, allowing RMHC to use the content effectively across different social media platforms and placements.
Rather than simply resizing one finished video at the end, consideration was given to framing, graphics and text placement so that the content continued to work in each format.
OUTCOME
A short filming window became a much larger collection of useful video assets.
By planning around the different communication opportunities available on the day, Visual Culture was able to capture campaign promotion, authentic interactions, family stories and volunteer experiences within a single production session.
The result gave RMHC content for an immediate fundraising campaign while also creating story-led material with a life beyond that particular event.
It is an approach that can be particularly valuable for organisations with busy teams, contributors or ambassadors whose availability may be limited.
When the right people are together in one place, the question isn’t simply “What video are we filming?”
It’s “What content can we create from this opportunity?”
For Ronald McDonald House Charities, that approach meant a few hours of filming could become a versatile collection of branded video content ready for different audiences, campaigns and social platforms.
