When a child’s happiness is stripped away from abuse, trauma, or troubling life experiences, it becomes incredibly difficult for them to learn and behave. Parents begin to struggle with how to manage their kid’s tendencies, learning behaviors, and overall demeanor. A Child’s Haven is the hero in this situation.
A Child’s Haven is a place where children can receive therapeutic care. It functions as a daycare but has onsite therapists who can talk with a child if they have an episode due to anger, sadness, frustrations, etc. Hadley and I are fortunate enough to work with ACH this semester to produce two success stories for them in video format. We both believe that this place can work wonders and benefit these children so much for their lives in the future.
Success Stories & Vision
Emily Harper, the development and marketing manager for ACH, is who Hadley and I are working closely with this semester. She has communicated their vision to us so that we can make it happen. The goal for the end of the semester is to capture two separate families and their experience with their child being at A Child’s Haven. We have already conducted one interview where we talked with mom, Shantel Ritter, about how this therapeutic child care has helped her son, Jahlil.
Shantel said in our interview with her:
“I think he is learning how to identify his emotions at this point and how to regulate. He’s learning some coping skills and how to calm himself and self-soothe a little better than he’s ever been before. So it’s amazing.”
This is the kind of experience that Hadley and I are going to be capturing through interviews and b-roll. We want real, emotional stories paired with heart-warming b-roll of the child learning and practicing the things he or she is being taught.
This is where we will use what we have learned in Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton regarding emotion. We want to really evoke emotion from the viewers so that they might feel led to become a donor or recruit children to the learning center.
“A great story does more than represent emotion from a distance. It makes us feel an emotional charge.”
Ellen Lupton, Design Is Storytelling
I plan on using Don Norman’s three layers of user experience in the creation of these videos as well. Understanding the visceral, behavioral, and the reflective layers of a story can really drive it forward to produce the best thing for your audience.
What’s Next?
As mentioned, Hadley and I have already filmed one interview and collected a small amount of b-roll from an open house event on September 14th. We are going to film all of our b-roll this week to start piecing together the emotional aspect of the stories. Once we have our b-roll, we can create a real plan for the layout of the video even more than we have already done.
Working with A Child’s Haven is an honor. I want to produce the best possible videos we can for them because what they are doing at their facility is going to change the lives of the children who spend time there. I can’t wait to turn these videos into an emotional journey for the viewers to go on.
“Emotions affect the design of anything… The success of a product lies not just in its basic utility but in its meaning in the lives of its users.”
Ellen Lupton, Design Is Storytelling
Advanced Multimedia Storytelling 