This is not your ordinary fashion brand. These are not your typical fashion models. This is an extraordinary pursuit to serve the underserved.
DEWEY is a relatively young fashion company whose mission is to achieve the ultimate fit for women under 5’4” - empowering them to feel confident and comfortable in their own skin - and doing so with a commitment to textile sustainability.
I was brought on to collaborate with their Head of Story to edit their very first brand film, setting out their history, present day challenges and future plans.
This film had to set the tone and brand mission statement efficiently, editing interviews that ran to ~20mins per interviewee down to ~90secs each without losing the essence of what was being said while setting a cohesive narrative in motion.
The Head of Story was adamant about retaining an emotional tone to the film, that any facts and stories came across with feeling. This meant careful consideration of both soundbites and pacing, keeping it lively while allowing breathing room for emotional beats without it feeling too contrived, setting the brand as a positive force with consideration for the sensitive nature of the issues faced by extra petite people.
Some key supplementary information which was not conveyed in the interviews was required so I designed and animated several graphics slates based on DEWEY's brand guidelines. These are intercut at various points to convey data in an impactful but minimalistic style in-keeping with the brand. They also helped provide some breathing room between interview clips.
At a later stage I was brought in to edit a short promo film for their upcoming jeans collection, taking behind the scenes photo shoot footage and turning it into a more polished film.
The remit here was to make the models look their best and create intrigue. I cut in some non-posing shots in monochrome to help add some dynamic contrast to the overall film, all finished off with a film emulation filter to add a softer more analogue tone that's less crisp and digital, more warm and welcoming.
I provided this as a deliverable in both landscape and portrait formats that remains open to being re-edited by the internal comms team into shorter edits with alternative, often trending, music, on a rolling basis.
From this same shoot I also edited a series of shorts for social media rollout across multiple platforms, using interview clips as the main narrative driver to help promote their new jeans collection.
Each model had their own distinctive vibe so I leaned into those for each edit, all helped to target the audience from multiple personality and body shape types.
I was tasked with selecting various soundbites that could grab the viewer's attention in those key first few seconds of viewer engagement, focused on an emotional hook leading to an inspirational payoff.
This wasn't about going in hard on a product sell but instead required a different approach that promoted brand value authenticity and a focus on appealing to the needs of the target audience - real people dealing with consequential issues.
Affiliate content creators were present at the shoot and filmed their own content. To maintain brand consistency a series of animated end slates were required for them to include, so I created several options utilising variations of DEWEY's brand colours.
Whilst much of DEWEY's content had and continues to use UGC, this was an exciting opportunity to help position their brand into a more high end space with elevated production values. The films not only expanded DEWEY's brand presence but also, and more vitally, told stories that helped build an emotional connection with their target audience and solidify them as a brand leader in their category.
