Charles Hamilton
Editorial Content Manager - Sopra Steria
“Hexe Digital brought our biannual report to life with striking visuals. They have fantastic creative vision and a super dependable production team which made a complex filming schedule of 16 videos, in five countries in 8 weeks feel seamless from start to finish.”
Capturing Innovation – Behind the Video & Photography for Sopra Steria’s 2025 Report
When Sopra Steria Next asked us to produce the video and photography content for their Open Innovation Report 2025, it was clear we weren’t just illustrating a document—we were helping shape the emotional and visual language of a pan-European innovation movement. This was about people, partnerships, and the power of collaboration in the AI era—and we needed to make that feel real, immediate, and human.
The Brief
Create a compelling suite of multimedia content that reflects the spirit of open innovation across Europe. Give faces to the statistics. Create emotion where there is often only process.
The objective was twofold:
Capture the humanity behind the partnerships—the startup founders, the corporate leaders, the project teams.
Visually reinforce the report’s key themes: AI, sustainability, cybersecurity, and cross-sector collaboration.
Our Creative Direction
We developed an integrated visual approach that blended documentary-style video with portrait and environmental photography. Our pillars:
Authentic Voices – Real stories told in natural settings.
Designing for Narrative – We matched photography with key editorial chapters, creating consistency between static and moving visuals.
Modern, Minimalist Visual Identity – Clean, tech-inspired aesthetics with warm tones to humanise the innovation themes.
The Results
35 Videos, over 500 images and various animated graphics created over a 3 month period.
Check out the full report below: https://content.soprasteria.com/openinnovationreport2025/
Photography Style & Execution
Our photography brief was to humanise innovation. That meant:
Environmental portraits: Founders in their working space, executives on the move—always with a sense of place.
Details and texture: Shots of hands on laptops, post-it walls, collaborative workshops, and digital whiteboards.
Emotion-led candids: Smiles, tension, thought—in-the-moment images that spoke to the real experience of co-creation.
Each photo series was designed to work in both editorial layout and social snippets, offering Sopra Steria a flexible content library beyond the report itself.
Video Production Highlights
The video series focused on short-form interviews, B-roll narratives, and motion-graphic overlays that pulled from the report data. Key techniques included:
Split-screen sequences showing the contrast—and eventual convergence—between startup dynamism and corporate scale.
Voice-led edits with overlay text that guided viewers through success factors like dedicated innovation teams and MVP-led collaboration.
Repetition of visual motifs such as open doors, flowing data, and layered transitions to symbolise transparency and integration.
Production Challenges
Logistics: Coordinating shoots in five countries in under four weeks required tight scheduling, nimble crews, and local production support.
Privacy & permissions: In healthcare and cybersecurity shoots, we navigated strict confidentiality rules—requiring sensitivity both on location and in post-production.
Cohesive aesthetic: With multiple teams shooting across different geographies, we created a detailed visual guide to ensure consistency in tone, lighting, and framing.