The Electric Wheelchair Wasn’t the Story
When we first began working with Phil Eaglesham and the team behind what was then Victor Mobility, the brief appeared relatively straightforward.
They had developed an extraordinary electric wheelchair and needed a film to explain it.
We could have talked about engineering, performance, features and specifications.
All of those things mattered.
But they weren’t the reason the wheelchair existed.
To understand that, we needed to understand Phil.
The Story Behind the Product
Phil Eaglesham is a former Royal Marines Commando. While serving in Afghanistan, he contracted Q Fever, an illness that would dramatically change his life and eventually leave him reliant on powered mobility. He subsequently found a new direction through Para shooting, representing Ireland at the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.
But living as a wheelchair user also exposed Phil to a different problem.
The mobility devices available to him didn’t always allow him to live in the way he wanted.
It wasn’t simply about getting from one place to another.
It was being able to move through ordinary spaces. To negotiate difficult terrain. To reach things. To interact with people at eye level. To participate rather than constantly wait for the environment around him to accommodate his needs.
Phil began asking whether the wheelchair itself could adapt better to the world.
That question eventually led to the development of Victor. Independent reporting from the International Paralympic Committee records that Phil had worked on the design for five years before taking a pre-production prototype to the Tokyo Paralympics.
Today, the company is Conquering Horizons, and that development journey has continued with its current mobility device, OMNI.
We Could Have Made a Product Film
The obvious approach would have been to put the wheelchair in front of the camera and demonstrate what it could do.
Show the movement.
Explain the engineering.
List the features.
Film it tackling different environments.
There would have been nothing inherently wrong with that.
But it would have explained what had been built without really explaining why it mattered.
And that distinction changed the film.
The Wheelchair Was the Product. Independence Was the Value.
The more we listened to Phil, the clearer the real story became.
The interesting part wasn’t simply that someone had designed a technically advanced wheelchair.
It was why someone felt compelled to design one in the first place.
Phil understood the problem because he had lived it.
The frustrations weren’t theoretical. Neither were the ambitions behind the product.
That meant the wheelchair itself could become evidence of something much bigger: a determination to give people greater independence, freedom and participation in everyday life.
Suddenly, we weren’t trying to make an electric wheelchair interesting.
We were trying to help an audience understand why it needed to exist.
That is a very different storytelling problem.
Features Still Matter
This doesn’t mean product features are unimportant.
Quite the opposite.
Conquering Horizons’ current OMNI incorporates capabilities including four-wheel drive, adjustable social height, a compact turning system, active suspension and adaptable seating. Those are meaningful engineering solutions.
But their significance becomes much clearer when you understand the human problem they are trying to solve.
Social height isn’t simply a lifting mechanism.
It can mean talking to somebody at eye level.
A smaller turning circle isn’t simply an engineering specification.
It can mean moving more easily through ordinary rooms and doorways.
Four-wheel drive isn’t merely performance.
It can mean accessing places that might otherwise be difficult to reach.
The specification tells us what the product does.
Phil’s story helps us understand why those things matter.
Sometimes Businesses Are Too Close to Their Own Value
This isn’t unique to mobility products.
It happens inside businesses all the time.
When you’ve spent years developing something, it’s natural to talk about the things you can see and measure: the engineering, process, technology, expertise, features or service.
Those things are tangible.
The more difficult question is:
What does any of this actually change for the person on the other side?
Often, that’s where the most important part of the story is hiding.
The product might be visible.
Its value may not be.
Our job is often to uncover that invisible value and find a way of making it understandable.
We Didn’t Call It Narrative Architecture
At the time we made Phil’s film, I wasn’t using the term Narrative Architecture.
That came much later.
But looking back, projects like this helped shape the thinking behind the way Autumn Films works today.
We didn’t begin by asking:
How should we film this wheelchair?
We began asking questions about Phil, why the product existed, who needed to understand it and what really mattered about it.
Only then could we decide what story the camera needed to tell.
Today, that process is much more deliberate.
We call it Narrative Architecture — understanding the communication problem before deciding what story, film or piece of communication should be built around it.
Explore our Narrative Architecture approach →
The Camera Comes Later
There’s a temptation in filmmaking to start with what something should look like.
What shots do we need?
Where should we film?
What equipment should we use?
How long should the finished film be?
Those questions matter eventually.
But Phil’s project remains a useful reminder that they aren’t necessarily the first questions.
The first question is often much simpler:
What does the audience need to understand that they don’t understand today?
In this case, the answer wasn’t simply the capability of an electric wheelchair.
It was the human need that had caused someone to rethink what a wheelchair could be.
The camera came later.
The Story Was Already There
We didn’t invent Phil’s story.
We didn’t need to.
Our job was to recognise which part of everything we’d heard actually mattered.
That’s an important distinction.
Good storytelling isn’t necessarily about making something sound more dramatic, emotional or impressive.
Sometimes it’s about stripping away everything that’s getting in the way of the thing worth understanding.
For Victor, the technology was extraordinary.
But technology alone wasn’t the story.
The wheelchair was the product. Independence was the value. Phil was the reason we could understand the difference.
And years later, that’s still one of the clearest examples of why Autumn Films starts with the problem rather than the camera.
If there’s something valuable about your organisation that people aren’t fully understanding, you don’t need to arrive with a film brief.
Start by telling us what’s not working.