Change.org: Tigray

Change.org needed a film to support a petition about Tigray. The easy version of that film is a summary of an event: what is happening, how many people have signed, why you should care in general terms. That version informs people without moving them.

The challenge was to find the person inside the campaign, and a story specific enough that an audience with no connection to Tigray would understand why it mattered.

We built the film around Mabel and her family rather than around the news.

The creative direction on this project belonged to someone else. My contribution to the story was to keep pushing toward her why: not the politics of the moment, but what her family meant to her and what starting the petition was actually about. As cinematographer I shot her account, and as editor I cut the film so her personal reason lands before any argument does. I supported the producing side of the shoot as well.

On a campaign film, finding the why is the work. An event gives people information. A person gives them a reason to act.

The petition drew around 25,000 signatures. The film gave Change.org a piece anchored in one person’s reason rather than a recap of events, which is what gave audiences unfamiliar with Tigray a way in.

This is what I mean by strategic storytelling. Helping decide what a story is actually about is not the same as holding the title that owns it, and it is the difference between a film that reports a campaign and one that gives people a reason to join it.