‘A Child’s Tale’ is UNICEF’s re-imagined brand film, bringing the charity’s story to life through a child’s eyes.
The aim was to create a childlike emotional connection with the audience - reawakening the sense of wonder and empathy we experience in childhood. The concept unfolds within a child’s pop-up book, a visual metaphor that directly links UNICEF’s brand story to the people it ultimately serves: children.
Traditionally, UNICEF relies on real footage from the field. While powerful, the harsh realities of war and suffering can cause audiences to disengage, making it difficult to reach and inspire new viewers.
To overcome this, the film was executed in 3D animation, combining 2D hand-drawn characters with environments built from digital design, photography, and stock assets. Framing the narrative through a pop-up book allowed us to tell a hopeful, accessible story without diminishing the seriousness of UNICEF’s mission.
The project was delivered by a three-person creative team. I led the creative direction and oversaw the production process end-to-end.
Narrated by actor, Michael Sheen OBE.
Agency: Manifesto
Concept: Al Hutchison
Script: Al Hutchison & Jake Cuddihy
Illustration: Jake Cuddihy
Animation: Jack Brooks
Producer: Al Hutchison
Director: Al Hutchison
Editor & sound design: Al Hutchison
For over a decade, I have partnered with WPP Media globally, working across its three media agencies—EssenceMediacom, Mindshare, and Wavemaker—to deliver corporate communications video content at scale.
This work has supported WPP Media’s success in new business pitches, client retention, internal and external communications, and the winning of global industry awards.
Across these three reference videos, I translated the client’s scripts into compelling visual stories, combining brand assets, stock footage, generative AI video, and motion graphics.
This campaign launched the new, limited-edition DS Givenchy Le MakeUp.
Targeted at 16–25-year-old women, the campaign was fronted by influencer and model Ruth Crilly. Shot in a white cyc studio, the car was treated like a fashion object, with Ruth delivering a tutorial-style walkthrough of its couture-inspired features.
The full-length film lived on a bespoke DS Givenchy Le MakeUp microsite, supported by 45-second teaser edits that drove traffic through targeted paid spend on Facebook and Instagram.
Agency: OMD UK
Producer: Al Hutchison
Director: Al Hutchison
DoP: Dominic Holland
Editing: Al Hutchison
VFX: Jack Brooks
Halloween is the busiest time of year for the Dungeons.
With a target audience of 9–17-year-olds—an age group highly skilled at influencing where their parents take them—YouTube was the natural media choice.
Our brief was simple but challenging: create a pre-roll ad compelling enough to stop viewers from hitting skip.
The result? A +113% uplift in online pre-sales compared to the previous Halloween period.
Created in partnership with MAC Cosmetics, the online ad is a ghoulish makeover time-lapse designed to inspire young audiences to embrace the spirit of Halloween—and visit the Dungeons.
Agency: Creative Cherry
Director: Al Hutchison
Producer: Al Hutchison
Camera: Jonny Franklin
Script: Ash Sykes & Al Hutchison
VFX: Ben Tillet
Editing: Al Hutchison
Kombucha is fermented tea.
Sounds gross? It tastes great!
The guys at Real Kombucha have created a delicious, low sugar drink aimed at those trying to reduce their alcoholic intake, yet still have an acidic, sophisticated drink at the bar or with a meal.
We have produced a number of videos for Real Kombucha, to help communicate what this new drink is and what its place is in a crowded marketplace.
We worked with Parkinson's UK to deliver the award-winning digital campaign, We Won't Wait.
To mark 200 years since the discovery of the condition, Parkinson's UK wanted a campaign that drove mass awareness and donations.
Agency: Manifesto
Credits
Producer - Al Hutchison
Director - Al Hutchison
DoP - Dom Holland
Editing - Maria Padro + Al Hutchison
Agency: Manifesto
Skrill is digital finance ecosystem, a collection of financial products including a digital wallet - a way to send and receive money online.
Challenging the big boys of money transfer, they developed a new, online, low fee product to send and receive money internationally, instantly.
In this online ad, the software product heads-up-display appears in-situ of the environment, showing the simplicity of sending and receiving money and how he product connects to the other products in their ecosystem.
Credits
Director + Producer - Al Hutchison
Casting + Locations - Al Hutchison
Script + Storyboard - Al Hutchison
DoP - Dom Holland
VFX - Jack Brooks
Editing - Al Hutchison
In collaboration with Arena Media (Havas Media Group) I had the opportunity to co-develop and execute supporting online video content for O2’s #BeMoreDog campaign.
At the time (2014) people were slow to upgrade to 4G data plans, so to accelerate adoption of the new cellular tech, we came up with a number of creative routes to showcase the power of 4G, enabling users to do more, quicker.
In this short film, a music blogger tells his story of tethering to his mobile phone on-the-go, enabling him to create and share content at speed to be part of the online conversation around live music.
Credits
Director - Al Hutchison
DoP - Jonny Franklin
Post - Al Hutchison
Agency: Creative Cherry
Cyclone Promotions is the boxing promotions company run by sporting legend Barry McGuigan and his family.
In 2015, their star boxer was World Champion Carl ‘The Jackal’ Frampton, preparing for his first defence of the IBF Super Bantamweight title in Belfast—a fight broadcast live on ITV, marking the first free-to-air primetime boxing event in over a decade.
This was a major coup for Cyclone, and Creative Cherry was brought in to devise a campaign that would reach beyond hardcore boxing fans, engaging casual sports audiences and helping bring boxing back into the mainstream.
We proposed an episodic video series offering exclusive insight into the gruelling regimes boxers endure in preparation for a world title fight. Over six weeks leading up to the bout, we produced behind-the-scenes mini-documentaries titled ‘Fight Camp’, posting them weekly on Cyclone’s YouTube channel and social platforms. Complementary boxer biography films helped build a highly engaged audience.
During fight week, we were on the ground in Belfast, covering the public workout, press conference, and weigh-in, all shot and edited within an hour to fuel online conversation. On fight night, we delivered a second-screen experience to the ITV broadcast, filming and uploading post-fight interviews to social media and our live blog.
Credits
Producers - Al Hutchison + Jon Wilks
Director - Al Hutchison
DoP - Dom Holland
Post - Al Hutchison + Ash Sykes
Campaign Managment - Jon Wilks
Agency: Creative Cherry
Credits
Producer - Al Hutchison
Script - Al Hutchison
Director - Al Hutchison
Design - Yasmin
Animation - Jack Brooks
Editing & Sound - Al Hutchison
Agency: Manifesto
Partnering with Lonely Planet to launch their new city guides.
Lonely Planet has always been the travel brand known to take you 'off the beaten track' and into the heart of a city.
Our campaign 'Every city tells a story' brought this front and centre.
We commissioned photo-collage artist, Adrian Brannan, to photograph and create four hero images of four popular travel destinations; London, Paris, Singapore and San Francisco.
Adrian spent several days in each city, capturing images from a single spot day and night, resulting in thousands of photographs from each location.
Working with physical prints, he cuts, layers, manipulates and builds each photo-collage to create a single image made-up of hundreds of photographs.
The final campaign images made up a number of display ads, such as 48 sheets on the tube.
I travelled with Adrian to San Francisco, filming a short documentary to support and extend the campaign online, adding the context and story to Adrian's process and the Lonely Planet brand.
Credits
Campaign concept: Mark Ellis + Tom Chapman
DoP - Al Hutchison
Director - Al Hutchison
Editing - Al Hutchison
Agency: Creative Cherry
Picture this. You’re a luxury rug designer. Barack Obama and Wills and Kate have one of your creations adorning their homes.
You're looking for inspiration for your next collection.
At home, you get the builders in to add electricity to an outhouse so the kids can play table tennis. As the builder digs a trench he hits something hard. It’s a 2000 year old Roman mosaic, naturally!
All of this is true. The serendipity of a luxury rug designer discovering a 2000 year old luxury floor design is just crazy.
I won the pitch to bring this amazing story to life.
The 10 minute documentary and short cuts live on YouTube and through international press exposure they have picked up more than 450,000 organic views.
Extracts and animation visualisations from the film were broadcast on Sky News, BBC news and many other news publications such as The Guardian, The Telegraph and CNN.
Credits
Director + Producer - Al Hutchison
DoP - Dom Holland
Editor - Al Hutchison
VFX - Jack Brooks
Agency: Manifesto
