case studyfilm · central smile
A dental practice filmed around the intraoral scan.
A dental practice, filmed around the scanning rather than the treatment. The intraoral scan is the moment a patient stops being told what is wrong and starts seeing it, and it is also the least frightening thing in the building.
The scan, and what it puts on the screen
Dentistry is a category people put off. Its own stock imagery is the chair, the overhead light and the instrument tray, which reproduces exactly the anxiety that keeps the appointment unbooked, and a smiling family photograph does not answer it. The film leads on the scanner instead: it is painless, it is quick, and it turns the appointment into information rather than a verdict.
The challenge
Every practice markets on trust, and every practice says so in the same words on the same photograph of the same chair.
The imagery is not neutral. It is a picture of the thing the patient is avoiding, used to persuade them not to avoid it.
Meanwhile the genuinely reassuring part of a modern practice, the diagnostic technology, is usually left out because it is not obviously photogenic.
How we approached it
The film opens on the scanner and what it produces: the patient's own mouth, in colour, in three dimensions, in seconds, on a screen they can see.
The clinicians are shown using it rather than posing with it, which is what makes a practice look practised.
One minute, because this is a film that has to work as a pre-roll and on a practice's own front page.
the filmthe delivered cut
One minute, scanner first.
Built to run as a pre-roll and on the practice's own front page.
Central Smile · 1:01 · sound on
the cutone minute, six moves
A minute, taken apart.
Sixty-one seconds has room for six decisions and nothing else.
beat 01
The name, once
The practice mark, backlit, held for a beat. That is the whole of the branding: the rest of the minute belongs to the work.
beat 02
The problem, on a screen
A full-mouth X-ray with one tooth boxed in yellow. The patient sees what the clinician sees before anybody describes it.
beat 03
The scanner, in use
Gloved, masked, working. Equipment posed with looks like a brochure; equipment being used looks like a practice that uses it.
beat 04
The mouth, rebuilt
The scan assembling itself on the wall monitor in seconds. This is the shot the film exists for, so it gets the most time.
beat 05
Two seconds of not being a clinic
A pot of coloured pencils in the corner. It says children come here and are fine, without a line of voiceover.
beat 06
The plan, explained
Clinician and screen in one frame, the treatment marked on the patient's own scan. Evidence and recommendation, together.
the lawwhat this one proves
In a category people avoid, film the part they are not avoiding.
The default imagery of an anxious category is a picture of the anxiety. Finding the part of the service that is genuinely reassuring, and leading on it, is not spin: it is the accurate description of what the visit is now mostly made of.
Converted from Hong Kong dollars at indicative rates. Work is quoted and billed in HKD.
A service people put off booking.
Turnaround is agreed with you before work starts.
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