480 Votes is the story of Lourdes Lucila Savedra Pilco, a middle-aged Peruvian woman who's spent most of her life working backbreaking jobs for little money.

When her children left for university, Lourdes faced crushing debt. She needed to make a change. Though working with livestock provided a potential solution, Lourdes collided with generations of discrimination. "That's a man's job," she was told.

With the help of CARE, Lourdes not only hurdled past that boundary, she was able to send her children to school while setting a new standard for women in her community.

For this project, Harbers Studio commissioned MediaStorm to work alongside Ripple Effect Images to tell the story of the organization CARE and their work in Peru.

Ripple Effect’s purpose was to gather still imagery for the use by CARE and for their archive of images made available to other nonprofit organizations and NGOs. Our goal was to create a short, cinematic narrative that intimately captures the work of CARE in Peru for their promotional purposes as well as to create awareness for the issues they deal with as a whole.

There were two major challenges we faced on this project.

The first challenge was finding a strong character with a powerful story in a short amount of time and then telling that story in a compelling way. As with any story that is not on your home turf, finding a great character is always the biggest hurdle and we knew it wouldn’t be any different with this project. With just one day on the ground for pre-production interviews and less than two days to shoot with our character, time was definitely a challenge.

The second was shooting video in conjunction with a still photography project. Working side-by-side in this manner can be extremely challenging as these two mediums require very different things. If not handled properly it can be a detriment to the overall impact of both formats.

We dealt with the challenge of finding a strong character through very focused pre-production planning and by using an entire day on the ground to scout locations and meet several potential subjects before deciding which one to focus on.

At first it can seem like a waste of valuable reporting time to spend an entire day not shooting when you only have a few days of coverage to begin with, but spending less time with the right subject is far more valuable than more time with a subpar character.

Sometimes on a project of this nature, time and resources make it necessary for still photographers and filmmakers to work together on the same subject and that was the case here. Being a filmmaker and still photographer myself I understand the frustrations on both sides of working in tandem on the same project. In this situation it was incredibly important to work as a team and communicate. Pre-planning became even more important as we needed to talk through and assess what situations would make better video and which would be better for still images. At the end of the day you are both there for the same purpose and everyone needs to come away with great content that furthers the cause.

The result is a short, character-driven video piece that intimately shows the life-changing impact that CARE’s programs have had on the life of a woman in rural Peru. The piece extends beyond the surface of what the organization provided and speaks to the psychological effects of empowerment.

This film was a collaboration with Harbers Studio and CARE.

Harbers Studios turbocharges the efforts of charitable entrepreneurs by helping them tell their stories. Our goal is to help them articulate and share the value of the work they do so they can inspire others to help them do it. Working with some of the best filmmaking talent in the world, we create compelling visual narratives that enhance the endeavors of organizations working to make the world a better place.

CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. They place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.

CARE Peru’s programs are structured around empowering vulnerable groups, especially women, indigenous groups and rural populations, to exercise their rights. CARE is focused on supporting the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals through programs in the areas of climate change, economic development, education, emergency and disaster risk reduction, gender equality, governance and extractive industries, health, HIV & AIDS, nutrition and integrated water resource management. Specifically, CARE aims to increase household income, reduce chronic malnutrition, improve education quality, reduce maternal and infant mortality, improve access to water and sanitation and improve regional and local governance.