Research films

Your research, told properly.

Complex ideas deserve more than a quick explainer.

Tell us about your work Get the guide first

We make films in collaboration with researchers, innovators and the comms professionals who promote their work. We help them share it clearly, confidently and with emotional depth, without losing the nuance.

We begin by listening: understanding what your work means, to whom it matters and how best to show that on screen. Then we find the human story, the spark that makes your audience care.

Our background spans broadcast, documentary and education, but what drives us now is curiosity. Every project is a chance to learn something new, to turn deep, intricate ideas into stories that stay with people.

Joe from Cambridge TV talking on camera during an interview, the camera set up on its tripod beside him

"I don't know how many companies fill that niche of an interest in both the humanities and the sciences, making content that is accessible, but it's quite ambitious, intellectually."
CL · University of Cambridge

"Thank you so much for the film. I love it, love it!! It is beautifully constructed and I love the way you build the tension in it and craft the story."
AM · Kavli Centre for Science, Ethics & the Public

"The scientific videos you are creating are making a real impact by enabling research to be done with people (not for them). From my own experience, I know how essential their input is in shaping research questions and running trials together."
GKM · Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

01How we work

We start by understanding

Before we plan the shoot, we do our homework. That means reading around the subject, researching it and arriving at the discovery and pre-production calls with real questions for you. It also makes us a useful proxy for your audience: educated and interested, but not specialists in your field.

We'll ask the journalist's questions: what, where, when, who, why and how. The answers give us a structure to build the information into - one an audience will follow, with human interest and something to feel. Where a concept is genuinely hard, we'll build a metaphor together to illuminate it.

And we film it like a documentary. Not a corporate video with a laboratory in the background.

We design the film with you, before the camera comes out of the bag, so you're completely happy it's accurate. You bring what the work means and why it matters. We bring the storytelling and an outsider's sense of what will land. You decide when the film is ready, and that's when the research is properly represented.

02Your film, your way

Tell the story the way you want to.

Some researchers like to articulate their ideas directly to camera. Others prefer to reveal the impact through case studies, patient stories, animation, or a neutral expert's validation of the work. We'll develop a strategy that gives you creative input, in a format you're excited about.

01Directly to camera
02Case studies
03Patient stories
04Animation
05A neutral expert's validation

03The work

Excerpts from some research films we've made

Language & Rhythm

University of Cambridge · 4 min reel

The University wanted a documentary and a podcast series together, exploring where research in linguistics leads. We sent BBC Radio presenter Hannah Morrison to sing nursery rhymes in a primary school, cox a rowing eight and take in some Shakespeare. The podcast goes further, into neuroscience, German poetry and comedy.

Taiwan Undaunted

TaiwanPlus · 3 min reel

TaiwanPlus, Taiwan's English-language channel, commissioned a feature documentary and four-part series about the island's culture, its defiant spirit and its possible fate. Written and presented by journalist Neil E Robbins, and streaming on selected documentary channels.

The Story of Cambridge Computing

Excerpts · 11 min

Cambridge has made one or two contributions to computing... Futurist Richard Watson takes us from Babbage to Turing, through the 1980s battle for home computer supremacy and the birth of ARM, then on to quantum. Half an hour on innovation, nostalgia and what comes next.

Newmarket Equine Hospital

Mini-documentaries · 5 min

A series of mini-documentaries about caring for racehorses and family horses alike, showing cutting-edge veterinary science at work. How do you give a horse a general anaesthetic? Very carefully.

04Thinking ahead

REF: the evidence is easier to gather now than in 2027

If a project is heading for an impact case study, the people and work are easiest to film while it's still live. The clinician who altered their practice, the teacher who took up the method, the policy adviser who used the finding - all of them are more willing and focussed on the impact in the year it happened, rather than in the year of the deadline.

We can record that testimony while we make a piece about the research itself, so you come away with two deliverables: something for the public and something for the record.

Two deliverables

01Something for the public
02Something for the record

Not ready to talk yet?

Don't Dumb Down

How we find the story inside a piece of research without stripping out the nuance that makes it matter. It works through the journalist's six questions on real examples, then shows how a visual metaphor can do what a paragraph of explanation can't.

We'll send the guide, then occasional tips for creating video and podcast projects. Unsubscribe in one click, whenever you like.

05What it costs

£2,500 to £10,000+

A short research film sits at the lower end. A longer research documentary or a prestige podcast series sits at the upper, and even more ambitious projects can reach above it.

Academic budgets often have to be applied for rather than found, so let's have a no-commitment talk early on. We'll help you scope something that will get approved.

06Next step

Tell us about your work.

Whether your goal is public engagement, funding or visibility in your field, we'll help you turn your research into a film as considered and impactful as the work itself.

Our first call is a conversation about your work, not a sales pitch. We'll listen, ask you questions, and if everyone's interested, we follow up with a costed proposal for you to consider. No obligation either way.

Book a call