AKIN members’ films shortlisted for awards

Beechtobeach founder, Jane, who is also a founder member of AKIN, talks about the challenges of producing this international commission from their Arundel base…

“I’m really proud of these films, created in collaboration with uTalk, to show on the world’s biggest airline. It’s a great example of the scale and quality of commission we can achieve from our modest base in Sussex.

Our pilot for the English language films in this series was our first commission after we set up our Arundel office so it’s very exciting that this project has been recognised in this way.

We developed the concept in partnership with uTalk’s language experts. The brief was to bring their language-learning app to life in films that could work on the back of every Emirates airline seat - without the need for interactivity.

We sourced, screen-tested and then filmed with native speakers of Arabic, German, Mandarin and Spanish at venues across London. Many were new to presenting so we had to help them to come across confidently and clearly without always understanding what they were saying!

Then came the painstaking work of editing sequences for 3 lessons in 15 different languages to create accurate and appealing content. Our videographer Joshua Kershaw burnt the metaphorical midnight oil many times over several months to make sure every video was spot on.

Everything we did had to be sent to uTalk HQ in West London to be checked by their amazing language editor Nat Dinham. If a dot or accent was out of place it was back to the edit suite. Two fonts – Urdu and Arabic – didn't work too well with the Adobe editing suite so Joshua had to find ways to work around this and invent new systems.”

The films are shown in a new Learning zone on Emirates ICE – their in-flight entertainment system - giving passengers a chance to try out Basic Words, Food and Drink and Getting Around phrases.

Here at AKIN we have our fingers crossed for February 12th, when the award winners will be announced at a ceremony in Dubai.