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Manchester Pride · UK LGBTQ+ charity · Anti-hate-crime campaign film + social
MANCHESTER PRIDE
Manchester Pride approached McGill Productions with a clear challenge: create campaign content that could speak honestly about rising LGBTQ+ hate crime while still reflecting the pride, joy, and sense of community at the heart of the festival. In McGill Productions' sixth year collaborating with Manchester Pride, the brief sat within the wider I Choose Kindness anti-hate crime campaign and the 2023 festival theme, Queerly Beloved, which marked ten years since the Marriage Equality Act. They needed a video production partner who could handle sensitive lived experiences with care, while also creating content that could drive awareness, strengthen community connection, and support future festival promotion.
BRIEF
Manchester Pride returned to McGill Productions for a sixth consecutive year — this time with the sensitivity stakes raised. Rising LGBTQ+ hate crime and the ten-year anniversary of the Marriage Equality Act framed the 2023 edition of the charity's ongoing 'I Choose Kindness' anti-hate campaign. The mandate: capture first-person testimony from the community and turn it into work that could carry the campaign.
Manchester Pride wanted two things at once — a celebration of a decade of charity impact, and an honest account of how much ground was still to cover on safety and acceptance. The 2023 strategy leaned heavily on UGC-style content to match how the audience now consumes video on Reels and TikTok, with a long-form aftermovie sitting alongside it to anchor the campaign emotionally. The objective: pair real-time social-native coverage with a single cinematic film that could hold the weight of the testimony.
Made for Manchester's LGBTQ+ community and the allies around them, I Choose Kindness premiered during National Hate Crime Awareness Week 2023 — against a backdrop of a 69% rise in sexual-orientation hate crime and a 115% rise in transgender hate crime across Greater Manchester in three years. McGill produced the hero film, real-time UGC content for Instagram Reels and TikTok, and studio interviews; Manchester Pride handled distribution through their owned channels, sponsor partner amplification (Virgin Atlantic, TikTok, Starbucks) and regional press coverage from Diva, BBC Radio Manchester, ManchesterWorld and I Love Manchester.
01 // PRE-PRODUCTION
A sixth year on the account meant the brief's tensions were familiar. Holding upsetting subject matter against an end-feeling of pride and joy is a delicate balance — one the team planned for from the outset rather than solving in the edit.
Interviewees were sourced in close collaboration with Manchester Pride, prioritising contributors willing to speak openly about resilience in the face of hate crime. Pre-interview calls and bespoke question drafting set expectations and built trust before anyone sat down on camera. The event schedule was locked in advance so each city-centre location had enough time on the shot list to capture what was needed without rushing contributors.
The Studio Interviews — Filmed 5 September at The Photocove. Minimal setup: three-point lighting, plain backdrop, nothing to compete with the contributor. Scheduling gave each interviewee privacy and unhurried time to speak. The brief was simple — keep the room comfortable, keep the story central.
The Festival — A break from the usual daily highlights cut. Coverage was shot mobile-first and vertical, in a UGC register, and pushed out in real time to Reels and TikTok. Vox pops across Manchester's streets kept the tone authentic and the feed reactive, strengthening the loop between the charity and its online community across the weekend.
The edit followed 'The Challenge' framework set in pre-production — three acts. 'The Struggle' opened on the hurdles facing the community, historically and now, without flattening the resilience alongside them. 'The Solution' moved into Manchester Pride's role driving acceptance and change. The third act carried the campaign's call forward.
I Choose Kindness premiered on 19 October 2023 during National Hate Crime Awareness Week. Across the social-first vertical cutdowns built for Reels and TikTok, the work generated 181,354 views and 6,701 engagements, with the long-form film driving press coverage in Diva, I Love Manchester, ManchesterWorld and BBC Radio Manchester.
Manchester Pride CEO Mark Fletcher endorsed the work directly: "I Choose Kindness is a powerful tool in our fight against hate crime, as it emphasises the importance of community, solidarity, and allyship."
The strongest signal here is retention. I Choose Kindness marked McGill's sixth consecutive year producing for Manchester Pride — a relationship that evolved through the 2020 short documentary Manchester Pride Parade: The Movie (winner, 'A Better Place' category, Beeston Film Festival 2021; official selections at Manchester Film Festival, Melbourne Lift-Off and Fear No Film, Utah) before culminating in the 2023 Queerly Beloved festival. Six years of re-commissioning by one of the UK's largest LGBTQ+ charities is the commercial proof point.
For charities and festivals working on sensitive subject matter, the temptation is to commission a single highlight reel and hope it carries every job at once — community rallying, donor reporting, press, social. It rarely does. Splitting the brief into two registers from day one — fast vertical content cut on-site for the community in the moment, and a cinematic documentary built for the premiere and the years after it — lets each format do what it's actually good at, without compromise on either side.
The other lesson is upstream of the camera. On a brief about hate crime, the real production craft is the pre-production conversation with contributors: what they're ready to say, what they're not, and how their words will be held in the edit. Get that right and the interviews carry the film. Get it wrong and no amount of post can rescue it.
Two pre-selected tracks were merged to follow the narrative arc beat for beat. The film was delivered widescreen for a cinematic premiere, sitting alongside the vertical social cut-downs as the campaign's long-form anchor — a sixth-year deliverable built to do what the UGC feed could not.