ENFR

LAB

Bringing impact
into every stage

Building on the audiovisual production company Nous Prod, OurFrame is developing a framework for designing audiovisual content for impact and measuring its effects on society.

See the method ↗

This approach grows through practice. Through its own productions, OurFrame tests its methods, confronts them with reality and develops them. We develop, produce and distribute ambitious public-interest audiovisual projects, bringing together the partners and funding needed to make them happen.

The LAB is the cycle of experimentation and learning at the heart of this approach.

Each project lets us test hypotheses, identify what works or needs adjustment, and draw lessons to gradually improve how we design content and media for the common good.

In time, these lessons are intended to be shared with the wider community, to develop practices, support others in their impact work and contribute to broader change.

The experimentation cycle

Open each stage to learn more.

  1. 01DesignDefine the intention and hypotheses

    defining the intention and hypotheses

    A project begins with a public-interest issue and a question: what role could a story play, and for which audiences?

    Developing a project takes more than a good idea. It means defining its ambition, understanding its audiences, bringing together the right expertise and building the conditions for it to exist.

  2. 02DevelopDevelop the project and secure funding

    Giving projects the means to exist

    The first step towards a viable project is to seek the necessary funding from foundations, public bodies, institutions and other partners able to support it.

    Through this work, we explore new sources of funding and build lasting relationships between those who make stories possible and those who create them, while respecting editorial independence.

  3. 03ProduceCreate the content with the right expertise

    from conception to production

    Once these conditions are in place, the project can take shape.

    Each production brings different disciplines together. OurFrame develops its projects with internal and external talent from journalism, audiovisual creation, production, scientific research and distribution.

    Their perspectives complement and challenge one another. Together, they develop editorial, artistic and strategic choices throughout production, turning an intention into coherent, engaging content with an intended impact.

  4. 04DistributeReach the intended audiences

    content comes fully to life when it reaches its audiences

    Distribution is considered from the project’s development stage. It follows from its Theory of Change: the target audience and its habits guide the choice of platforms, which in turn shape formats.

    The aim may be to reach a broad audience or a specific community. Television broadcasts, cinema releases, digital platforms, screenings with discussions and distribution through institutions serve different purposes.

    Research gives this approach a foundation: well-designed media campaigns rank among the most efficient social interventions, because the marginal cost of distribution is low and even limited behavioural change can generate substantial collective benefit.

    OurFrame has its own media outlets, which offer settings for developing and testing new approaches.

    Our productions are also intended to circulate beyond our own channels.

    Depending on the project and its audiences, we build collaborations with television channels, media organisations, cinemas, festivals, platforms, institutions, associations, creators and other distribution partners.

    From the cinema screen to the social feed, we coordinate multichannel impact campaigns in which each distribution decision follows from the intended impact, target audience and chosen mechanism of change.

  5. 05MeasureObserve effects and gather lessons

    looking at what happens after distribution

    Audience numbers, views and festival selections tell part of the story. On their own, they do not tell us what content does for the people who encounter it.

    We therefore seek to understand how our productions influence audiences’ knowledge, perceptions, intentions and behaviours.

    These findings are not just there to prove a project “worked”. They help us learn. Results that confirm our hypotheses help us move forward. So do those that contradict them.

    The lessons may lead us to change content, a distribution strategy or our approach to the next project.

    The challenge is therefore not only to distribute widely, but to create the right conditions for a project to meet the audiences for whom it can be relevant.

Each project informs the next

Project by project, we seek a better understanding of how to fund public-interest stories, give them a form that reaches their audiences, circulate them and observe what they actually achieve.

This knowledge informs our next productions, our methods and the support we offer others.

OurFrame builds its expertise through practice: making, distributing, observing and starting again.

Have a project in mind?

Are you developing a public-interest audiovisual project? Looking for a partner to structure, produce or distribute it, or explore funding options?

Let’s talk

We pay particular attention to public interest, editorial and artistic quality, relevance to audiences, potential for change and scope for learning.

Each proposal is considered individually, according to its relevance and our expertise.