Putting The Ward In Awards:

Ward 5B’s Cannes Submission Films

In 2015, CPG giant Johnson & Johnson approached Universal McCann with a unique task: they wanted to help change the way America sees nurses. After a bevy of meetings and a storytelling workshop with UM Studios, they decided to do something revolutionary: a feature-length film, produced by Universal McCann and Johnson & Johnson, documenting the world-changing work and empathy of the nurses who worked at the first AIDS ward in the United States, titled simply 5B. After years of conducting interviews, scouring long-forgotten footage, and tracking down former nurses and patients alike, the film was given a limited release in San Francisco, the city where the ward was established, where it was greeted with critical and local acclaim.

Fast forward to 2019, in my first few months at UM, and 5B was preparing to be released on to streaming platforms… and presented to jurors at the Cannes Lion Awards. However, there was one small problem: with just a week until the deadline to submit any work to the juries, the agency hadn’t even started their submission films. In just a week, the following collection of videos was scripted, produced, and sent to Cannes for judgment.

Case Films

For these videos I wrote scripts, chose film selects, and provided visual direction.

Demo Films

For theses videos, I crafted the interview questions that revealed insights from the creators of Ward 5B, and helped weave their answers into a cohesive narrative.

Results

Bolstered by these submission films, the written awards submissions that accompanied them, and, of course, the film’s groundbreaking quality, 5B won a multitude of Lions at the Cannes Festival: a Silver Lion in the Film Craft Category for editing, a Silver Lion in the Health & Wellness - Corporate Image & Communications category for Film, TV, and Digital Form Content, and a Gold Lion in the Film Craft category for direction.

And finally, while I didn’t write any script for it, I believe that, in a small way, I had a hand in creating this video as well.