We recently worked with Ken West, Senior Director of Communications at Prevent Blindness, to help raise awareness about diabetes-related eye disease, so when he approached us about working together again on another project, we were excited.
Ken and his team want to use two upcoming solar eclipses, one in October 2023 and a second in April 2024, to educate people about protecting their eyes during an eclipse, to encourage people to purchase solar eclipse glasses, and to raise money to support the sight-saving work of the organization.
“To make the video work, we had to schedule production days to interview two experts in Ohio and a former astronaut, Mike Massimino, in New York. The Storyteller Studios team helped make this work as efficiently as possible on our limited budget.”
— Ken West, Senior Director of Communications, Prevent Blindness
Prevent Blindness wanted to share the excitement about watching an eclipse, inform people of the dangers to their eyes, and offer them a way to protect their eyes during an eclipse.
“The video had exactly the emotional weight that we had hoped for. Through Mike Massimino’s interview, the video perfectly conveyed the significance of solar eclipses as a celestial event that anyone can enjoy watching.”
— Ken West
We combined Mike Massimino’s interview with Prevent Blindness’ two experts, a retired NASA physicist, and a retina specialist, to discuss the kind of retina damage and vision loss that unprotected eclipse viewing can cause. The video explains how to view and eclipse safely using manufactured eclipse glasses.
“We felt that it was the most emotionally impactful video we’d ever published. In their first few days online, the eclipse videos became our most successful videos on YouTube, and we feel the audience will only grow as we get closer to the eclipses. The videos drive traffic to our website and have helped add subscribers to our YouTube channel. We believe they do an excellent job of educating people about eclipse-eye safety. The video will likely have a long life on YouTube. It is an addition to our educational content that we hope will continue to inspire people to protect their eyes when they enjoy eclipse viewing around the world.”
— Ken West
Ken said that working with The Storyteller Studios was a pleasure.
“They understood the limits of our budget and helped us make the most of our resources to create a high-level, exceptionally entertaining, and educational video for our website and social media channels. I hope to work with their team again soon.”
— Ken West
Kevin Christensen led the team that produced the latest video for Prevent Blindness.
“We love partnering with Prevent Blindness because of their passion to create informative, impactful, authentic work that makes a difference. Plus, I’ve always been a fan of anything to do with space or astronauts, so this project was right up my alley. It was an honor to work with Ken and the Prevent Blindness team to give people the information they need to protect their eyes during the upcoming eclipses.”
— Kevin Christensen, Producer, The Storyteller Studios
Watch this work and previous projects produced with Prevent Blindness on the topic of diabetes-related eye disease here: