Charity video production in London

All of it, run from our London HQ: the brief and research, a written treatment, consent and permits, the shoot, the edit, grade, sound and music, and the cuts for appeals, events and social. If your team already has an editor, we can shoot and hand over the rushes. If you have your own director, we’ll produce and crew for them through our film crew hire in London.

Five kinds. Appeal and fundraising films, like The Bio Estrela Project. Impact films for funders and boards, like The Living Layer for the South West Peatland Partnership. Programme films and series, like EcoTrust’s in Uganda. Campaign and event films, like Surfers Against Sewage at Downing Street. And films where a brand backs a cause, like Kärcher’s Float to Live day with the RNLI. Longer stories live on our documentary production in London page.

We’ve made films for charities since 2016. The Living Layer was Overall Winner at the Edinburgh Conservation Film Festival 2026, The Bio Estrela Project won the Regional Panorama Award at CineEco 2024, and our film following Robin Hanbury-Tenison, who founded Survival International, aired 17 times on BBC News. Clients include EcoTrust, IIED, The Woodland Trust, Buglife, Surfers Against Sewage and Tate.

One film of two to ten minutes runs from £9,500 to £25,000. A suite of films from one shoot, or a documentary of 10 to 30 minutes, runs £25,000 to £100,000, and broadcast or multi-part work starts at £100,000. What moves the number is time in the field, travel, how many films come out of the shoot and the edit. We offer charity rates, and the first call and the estimate are free.

Yes. We offer charity rates, and we invest studio time, pro bono, in special projects whose stories need telling. Tell us the budget you have on the first call and we’ll tell you what it can make, before anyone spends a day on a treatment. Our published prices are where the conversation starts.

Not always. Under HMRC’s VAT Notice 701/58, making a charity’s advert is zero-rated when the advert runs on someone else’s time or space: television, cinema, paid social or other people’s websites. A film for your own website or your own social accounts is standard-rated. The charity usually confirms it qualifies in writing, so tell us at the brief if a film will run as a paid advert, and check the final position with your finance team.

Most single films take four to eight weeks from the brief to delivery. Fieldwork sets its own clock: peat restoration only happens between August and March, so The Living Layer followed a winter on the moors, and EcoTrust’s films were refined over a year after three weeks in Uganda. If the date is fixed, a gala or a petition at Number 10, we plan backwards from it.

As involved as you want. You sign off the treatment and the questions before the shoot, then see a rough first cut, with no music or grade, to check the story is heading the right way before anything is polished. After that come rounds of changes. EcoTrust reviewed and refined its films with us over a year; Kärcher’s Float to Live film with the RNLI was edited in two days for the press.

Through the people who already know them. On KYN’s films in London, KYN chose and briefed every family and we never approached a resident ourselves, and that’s the consent rule we work to on any film with people at its centre. We ask questions that let people explain rather than perform, and the edit never trades someone’s worst moment for a fundraising beat.

When the ask is clear and the story is true. The Bio Estrela Project was made to raise money for a replanting project that had none, and it has since received its early-stage funding. Outside the charity world, our explainer for Great Western Credit Union’s first community bond ran on the campaign page, and the offer closed at more than £1.9 million against an £800,000 target. A film gives a fundraising plan something worth sharing.

Cinema cameras, lenses, sound and lighting, sized to the place: small enough to get through Downing Street’s security for Surfers Against Sewage, tough enough to keep working at minus 14 on the moors for The Living Layer. The edit and grade run in DaVinci Resolve with our own post team, so a charity film gets the same finish as our brand work.

Yes. We carry £10m public liability and £10m employers’ liability, and send our certificates with every permit application. In London the landowner sets the minimum: The Royal Parks ask for £5m public liability, and TfL and Canary Wharf ask for £10m. If your charity’s own policy asks for more, tell us at the brief and we’ll check it before the shoot.

Yes, and both cost charities less. The Royal Parks list charity films under their “other filming” rate, £650 + VAT a day for up to five people in the central parks, against £2,530 for a commercial shoot. The City of London charges £40 to apply for charity and community projects, at its discretion. We apply during pre-production and build each notice period into the schedule.

Most of the time. Our charity films have taken us to Uganda, Portugal’s Serra da Estrela and four moors in the South West, and we have bases in Manchester, Bristol and Cornwall, so the crew is often already near the landscape. The producing still runs from our London HQ, so you keep the same people from the first call to delivery.