Planning and preparation of the Healthier You project

After pitching against two other companies, Lucas Media was awarded the contract; we held an initial planning meeting with the NHS Diabetes Programme’s Communications and marketing team to ensure we fully understood their requirements for the project.

The films were to feature the stories of people who had taken part in the DPP after being either diagnosed with diabetes, or told they were on the verge of becoming diabetic.
Following our initial meeting with the NHS, we assembled our project team, agreed the stylistic approach for the project and planned the logistics of where we needed to be around various locations in the UK.

Over a four-month period we followed three BAME participants, filming documentary styled footage of their everyday lives in various locations around the country, including Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire to show how their lives had improved as a result of the DPP. We also filmed talking head interviews about their personal challenges with diabetes, and took a number of still photographs which were used in a complimentary poster campaign that was sent to GP surgeries around the country.

As we arranged filming dates with each of the subjects, we briefed them fully to ensure they were all completely comfortable with what we were intending to film and how we planned to do so.
We had to be flexible during filming, accommodating changes in the subjects’ schedules and sometimes improvising locations, such as switching from filming one subject at home where the light was too bad, to filming at his local gym.