This is Ella

Every Breath Matters campaigns for a world in which everyone will breathe clean air by 2030. To do so, they asked us to create a powerful, personal social media video for World Environment Day (5 June).

We knew people had to see Ella’s face to feel the pain and outrage her story demands. Her mother kindly gave us permission to use a beautiful, poignant photograph – and it became a powerful emotional anchor for the entire piece.

For the rest of the visuals, we collaged different media – photography, texture, geometric and organic shapes, and data visualization – to build a dynamic, restless visual story.

Ella’s story is also told through the sound design from composer Tim Cowie. The sounds of a child inhaling and exhaling, traffic, a bleeping heart monitor, then silence.

Launched on World Environment Day 2019, the video immediately gained positive engagement on social media. But the biggest compliment came from Ella’s mother Rosamund, who celebrated it as the best telling yet of her daughter’s story.