Hi Nida! How would you describe Little Bird Films as a business?
Little Bird Films is a Cardiff-based television production company specialising in factual content, mainly for BBC, S4C and Channel 4. It’s a bilingual, female-led company that has been running for just over five years.
How did you find out about the Clwstwr funding?
During lockdown, we saw some advertisements for the Clwstwr funding opportunity and heard about it through word of mouth.
What inspired you to apply for funding?
We’ve always been interested in green causes. We had dealt with BAFTA’s albert scheme for some time, regularly reporting and submitting environmental data. The opportunity to apply for funding to help develop something that could make our industry greener was hugely exciting.
What were you aiming to do for your Clwstwr project?
The aim of our funding application was to explore ways to make environmental sustainability easier for media production companies. Starting from a base of our own experiences with submitting for albert accreditation, we wanted to find a way to make the process quicker and easier for companies without big budgets to hire specialised teams to oversee the role. Over two funding rounds, we received a total of £35,000.
What process did you use to carry out your Clwstwr project?
First, we hired a researcher and analyst to explore the field and define the problem we wanted to address. We attended workshops and made use of resources provided by Clwstwr and PDR to support our R&D journey. Then, we undertook research and gathered data about the market, conducting interviews with people and organisations in the sustainability space. This helped us to understand the status of the industry at the time and identify a gap.
We identified multiple problems: the way that carbon footprint data is collected, the siloed nature of the role of sustainability officers and lack of wider crew engagement with sustainability goals.
The next stage involved prototyping. We designed and developed a prototype of a web application that could streamline the process of gathering sustainability data. To test it, we conducted usability studies with 10 industry professionals, who gave us feedback and helped us refine the UI design. Then, we hired a developer to create a beta version of the application based on the prototype, with the usability study feedback, and ran pilot trials with six different production companies to get feedback of the app being used in a live production environment.
What were the outcomes of your research?
We developed and launched Green Wing – a web and mobile application for streamlining sustainability and collecting and managing the carbon footprint data needed for mandatory albert accreditation.
Where do you think you’ll go next, having carried out the R&D?
We have successfully completed five trials with production companies and have three trials ongoing, including a paid trial with Sky Studios on a high-end television drama. We presented the results of our project at numerous exhibits and conferences, receiving a lot of interest from the industry. Green Wing has been endorsed by PACT. We are in the process of securing further funding to complete another round of software development based on the trial feedback received so far.