The Metropolitan Police Partnership & Prevention Team
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About the project
Take One Productions was commissioned by the Met Police to produce a series of animations to help prevent knife crime.
Aimed specifically at retailers, the animations were to be used as part of an active in-store training campaign designed to educate both staff members and management in the prevention of both knife theft and the sale of knives to under 18’s. Importantly, the animations also would also be offered to businesses to be used as part of their staff induction training so that new staff could understand the importance of the issue from day-one.
To fulfil the brief, we knew that the animations had to be both educational and impactful. They had to be simple and direct. We ensured that the advice was practical, easy to understand, and powerfully linked the sale of bladed items to knife crime. The audience needed to quickly understand their role in preventing the tragedies which they read about in the papers and hear about on the news. If they put into practice the guidance contained in the animations, THEY would have a direct impact on saving lives.
In the end, the point was to achieve long lasting, behavioural change with continued awareness. And we achieved this.
Production workflow
Following an initial kick off meeting with all stake holders (the Met’s Partnership & Prevention Team, the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, Croydon Council and Hammersmith & Fulham Council) at New Scotland Yard, scripts were written by our in-house script writer.
The Met conducted a number of workshops to ensure that the ideas and concepts in the scripts were relevant, easy to understand and on message. Those workshops confirmed that they were.
We then created a series of initial artwork concepts for the characters featured in the animations. Through a process of consultation and working meetings, the original artwork was developed through to storyboarding.
The storyboarding stage of any animation offers an additional opportunity during the production for the client to feedback on visual concepts, and for more creative input from our team. We used that opportunity to the full and further explored and developed both characters and various scenes to ensure we met the brief. We encouraged free expression of thought from all stakeholders in large, open-table meetings, where our creative team continued to develop ideas and themes into visual animation concepts.
Finally, the team got to work producing the finished outputs. Each animation featured a professional voice over artist recorded in our studio, with music and sound effects added to augment the action and achieve the final edit.
Client feedback
The animations were a huge success. They are being used frequently by all stakeholders in the training they were designed for. Subsequently, the passing of the Offensive Weapons Act meant that additional information needed to be communicated, and the original animations needed to be updated. Our team were briefed to produce a second set of animations in the same style, aimed at educating the public, couriers and retailers about the revised guidance and law on bladed items. The Home Office was added to the stakeholders involved the project. We stuck to the same successful production process, and the final animations were also a success.
“Take One were a pleasure to work with. Our projects had tight deadlines and multiple complex changes brought on by, the second time round, Covid delays to legislation. Steve and his team worked with us through these to ensure the content remained high quality and they delivered the project on time and budget. Feedback from our stakeholders to the end product was great and we would happily work with the team again.”
Stephen Simpson
Partnership, Engagement & Crime Prevention
Metropolitan Police Service