The Baakens Valley mimicking the Amazon rainforest, a market in Walmer’s Gqeberha township transformed into a bustling street in India, a patch of gravel in Kariega becoming a refugee camp in Jordan.
As Nelson Mandela Bay creative production agency, Rooftop, celebrates 20 years of producing video and other content for multiple multilateral agencies – including the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) – the company paid tribute to the diversity of a city that made much of this work possible.
“We must have filmed somewhere in the region of a thousand videos in and around PE,” said Rooftop creative director Nick Waring. “We’ve filmed on roofs, under buildings and bridges, out to sea, in rivers, in countless houses, shops, schools, malls, in taxis, and on the highway.”
While a lot of Rooftop’s work is still filmed on location in many countries across the world, budgetary, security, time and other constraints – including travel bans during the COVID-19 pandemic – has really forced Rooftop to think out of the box, as it strives to create content that shines the spotlight on many of the world’s most pressing issues, ranging from keeping children in school in conflict-affected areas, to fighting diseases such as HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, to tackling global food waste, and preventing gender-based violence.
“In 2021, when travel was still difficult because of COVID, we were in the middle of producing a miniseries for UNICEF aimed at reducing child marriage in West Africa – so we turned a farm in the Steytlerville area into a fictional West African village,” said creative director Tom Collins.
The people in many of Rooftop’s videos are homegrown too.
“The diversity of our city means we’ve been able to use local people to represent countless nationalities around the world, including African, Asian, Middle-Eastern and South American,” said Waring. “They’ve all played a role in our mission to tell stories that lead to real impact and make a difference in people’s lives.”
Though Rooftop has expanded its offices to Cape Town and Europe, the company is proud of its Gqeberha roots – and its head office remains here.
Rooftop was founded in 2003 by Richard Ahlfeldt and James Scholtz, both just 19 at the time, and best friends from their high school days at Harvest Christian School.
Over the past 20 years, Rooftop’s journey has shifted from humble beginnings duplicating DVDs and filming municipal events in the Bay, to making TV ads, to creating advocacy and awareness videos to shine the light on humanitarian issues, to driving entire global campaigns.
Rooftop’s clients include a string of UN agencies, along with many other global organisations, such as the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA), the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF), The Global Fund and Save the Children.
And the company uses a range of storytelling tools to bring global issues to light, including long-format films, social media videos and posts, billboards, posters, interactive media and influencer-driven content.
Recently, when the Springbok rugby team secured their place in the Rugby World Cup final, Rooftop rallied to produce a video in just four days for Gautrain, capturing the spirit of a country rising above its challenges and standing together in the name of sport. The supporting actors in the video were local, while the lead actors were from around South Africa and the footage was filmed in Gqeberha and Johannesburg.
That same week, a team was filming a documentary in South Sudan – as part of a project to end child marriage in a country where 52% of girls are married before they reach 18.
The countries and topics may vary – but the aim to stir hearts minds remain the same as they’ve always been at Rooftop.
“For us, it’s not just about words and likes and views, it’s actually around designing campaigns that change people’s perceptions and behaviour,” said Scholtz.
Over the years, the staff at Rooftop have grown from a handful of creatives to a team of 70, that include strategists, social media specialists, graphic designers, videographers, writers, researchers, animators and illustrators.
“The 20th anniversary celebration of Rooftop is actually a celebration of extraordinary people who’ve come together and have fought dearly to make Rooftop what it is today,” said Ahlfeldt.
