A look at Google Photos' documentary-style digital ad film

Created by Lowe Lintas, the film features Amit, a visually-challenged man who gets a corneal transplant.

Google Photos, a mobile app by Google, has come up with a new documentary style digital film conceptualised by Lowe Lintas. In this film, the brand has captured the story of Amit who loses his eyesight when he is in Class 9, and ends up missing all the fun in life such as family marriages, holidays, and birthday parties.

The video has crossed over a million views in a span of two weeks on Google India's YouTube channel.

A look at Google Photos' documentary-style digital ad film

In the latter part of the film, it is shown that Amit finds a ray of hope when his family decides to get his corneal transplant done so that he can see once again. Once the operation is successfully done, his family gifts him a mobile in which all the memories are stored in the Google Photos app. These are those photos and memories that he had missed ever since he lost his eyesight. He relishes every moment through the photos.

Commenting on the execution of the digital film, Arun Iyer, chief creative officer, Lowe Lintas, says, "The execution wasn't difficult, but as and when the eye clinic called the family, we had to be ready because we wanted to do it absolutely authentically. It is absolutely real. Just before two days of the surgery, we got a call saying there is a donor and we had to be ready."

Iyer further adds, "We didn't want to come in the way of the moment and wanted to capture it with as little intrusion as possible. So, we just went with about three-four cameras and minimum crew and shot this documentary-style film, letting it play out the way it was. We felt it is a story worth sharing with the world."

Any dos and don'ts?

Iyer says, "For us, it was not like a written story. It was basically about documenting a real story. The don'ts were -- don't try and do anything for the sake of making the film better. We just went ahead and captured it."

When asked about the brief given by Google, Iyer says, "We just had to showcase the fact that Google Photos app works really well in collating your pictures and is very easy to use. We came up with the idea of finding a person for whom these memories mean a lot and that's how we discovered this story. We reached out to the family and they were happy to let us showcase it."

A note by Google India on its YouTube channel

Memories are an important part of our lives. It is even more for someone who was a part of them, yet missed out because he couldn't see. Of the 40 million visually-impaired people in the world, 15 million are from India. And, due to an acute shortage of transplantable corneas, they are often resigned to a life without sight. This is the true story of Amit, a young man who was about to undergo a corneal transplant, and regain his vision after almost 15 years. With a little help from Google Photos' image search and organisation features, Amit was able to rediscover all those memories he had been a part of, but missed out on seeing them.

We are grateful to Amit's family and the Nirmaya & Tej Kohli Foundation for allowing us to be part of Amit's journey.

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