Baby First Tastes Films

Public Health England, now part of the UK Health Security Agency, runs Start4Life, a brilliant NHS programme that gives parents-to-be and families with young children trusted advice and practical support, all about helping people understand just how important those first 1,000 days of life really are.

As part of our ongoing relationship with PHE, we were commissioned to create a series of films helping parents and carers access healthy weaning recipes as part of the Start4Life initiative.

Our Home Economist developed weaning recipes that were easy to prepare and genuinely appetising for babies moving onto solids, while our casting producer found four babies of just the right age – Athena-Rose, Prince, Marnie and Maisie – to star in the films.

Filming over two days meant working entirely around the babies’ own sleep and feeding schedules rather than any fixed shoot plan, and not every baby was keen on the food on offer, a real, occasionally tricky challenge that needed plenty of patience as well as planning.

We followed strict protocols throughout: regular breaks were built in, every baby was checked for allergies before casting, and we had a first aider on site for the whole shoot given it was all about food and eating.

Footage and stills from the shoot were used right across the lifespan of the Start4Life campaign, rather than as a single one-off release.