BARPI: preventing industrial accidents
For more than five years, BARPI — the French bureau for the analysis of industrial risks and pollution — has chosen to trust our expertise to make films of a particular kind. The aim? To decode industrial accidents and draw the lessons that matter for the future.
Decoding one industrial accident to avoid the next
Several films have now been produced in close collaboration with BARPI. Each episode takes the viewer into the heart of real events, in order to understand and analyze the root causes of an accident and draw lessons from it.
These reconstructions go well beyond simply recounting the facts: they set out to understand the complex chains of events and the multiple causes behind an industrial accident.
The ambition? To anticipate and prevent future accidents, through a better understanding of past mistakes.
Sets rebuilt in 3D, actors composited on green screen
To make these films, we took a rigorous technical and creative approach. First, to understand the subjects properly and be sure of presenting them in a way that teaches. To stay as close to reality as possible, our team rebuilt factory sets in 3D (sometimes with a dose of fiction, so as not to stigmatise a real place).
To make those scenes genuinely alive and human, actors were filmed on green screen, then composited into the digital sets, bringing reality and virtual reconstruction together.
All of it was dressed in 2D animation / motion graphics to make the films instructive and educational, but above all simple to follow.
There from the script, not only from the shoot
Our work with BARPI went beyond the technical production alone. From the very beginning of the project, we took part in adapting the script. From the idea stage through to the storyboard, every step was worked on carefully to guarantee a narrative that flows and lands. Once the films were finished, we handled their distribution, both online and through the creation of a “barpi” mobile app, giving these videos the widest possible reach.
Over the years, this collaboration with BARPI has grown stronger, a sign of our shared commitment to raising awareness of industrial risk and teaching about it. Each film plays its part in advancing safety in industry.
The instructional film, when getting it wrong is expensive
A prevention film has no right to be approximate: it describes real chains of events, and one simplification too many turns a lesson into a misreading.
Hence the method: understand the case file before writing, rebuild the sites in 3D rather than alluding to them, and dress the whole thing in motion graphics so it stays legible to someone outside the trade.