Chapter 01
Tapping Mature Rubber Trees & Latex Collection
A step-by-step field demonstration of tapping mature rubber trees and collecting latex, from the INROAD natural-rubber training films.
Casestudy / ATMA · INROAD
An exacting rubber-farming craft, made teachable at national scale: live-action skill-training films, in four languages
Sector
Skill Training · Agriculture
Geography
Northeast India
Format
Live Action
200,000hectares targeted
5training chapters
4regional languages
100%filmed in real fields
India needs more natural rubber than it grows. The country gets through roughly 15 lakh tonnes a year and produces barely half of it, importing the rest. To close that gap under Atmanirbhar Bharat, the four biggest tyre makers (Apollo, CEAT, JK Tyre and MRF) teamed up with the Rubber Board of India on INROAD (Indian Natural Rubber Operations For Assisted Development), a first-of-its-kind partnership to grow the Northeast's own rubber.
But the whole plan came down to a teaching problem. Thousands of first-time farmers had to learn one exacting craft: growing, tapping and processing natural rubber the right way. That's the part we were there to build: the visual curriculum that made it teachable at scale.
- Client
- ATMA, with the Rubber Board of India
- Initiative
- INROAD (Indian Natural Rubber Operations For Assisted Development)
- Backed by
- Apollo, CEAT, JK Tyre & MRF
- Sector
- Skill Training · Agriculture
- Service
- Live-action video production
- Languages
- Assamese, Bengali, Hindi, Malayalam
The Challenge
A precise craft, in many languages
In rubber, one wrong cut can scar a tree for years, so there's barely any margin for error. First-time farmers had to get every stage right: the tapping cut, collecting and coagulating the latex, rolling and drying the sheets, guarding the bark through the monsoon, and grading the finished result.
- The learners were spread across the Northeast, most of them new to rubber.
- They spoke different languages, so one film could never reach everyone.
- Some of it can't be taught on paper. You have to see it done.
- And it had to last, long after any single workshop.
What we did
A filmed, field-tested curriculum
So we turned the craft into a visual curriculum. Working alongside expert farmers, we broke each skill into steps a first-timer could actually follow, then filmed real live-action demonstrations of every stage in working fields, with real hands and no stock footage.
The audience was multilingual, so we built the regional versions in from the start instead of dubbing them later. Every training film runs in Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam, and a pair of corporate films in English and Hindi told the initiative's story to partners and stakeholders.
Instruction alone doesn't hold a first-time learner, so we rooted the storytelling in the growers' own world: the pride an Assamese home takes in being spotless became the case for keeping latex just as clean. The corporate cut carried the bigger idea, "From Tree to Tyre: a journey of quality and purity."
The deliverables
Two films, two jobs
This was two briefs in one. First-time farmers needed to learn an exacting craft; the partners and public backing the programme needed to believe in it. So we made a different film for each.
01
The training curriculum
Teaches the craft
Five chapters in four languages: live-action lessons that show first-time growers exactly how it's done, made to be rewatched for years.
02
The flagship film
Carries the mission
A polished corporate cut, “From Tree to Tyre,” that puts the initiative’s story in front of partners, government and the public.
How We Made It
Brief & curriculum design
Before we scripted a frame, we sat with expert farmers to answer the harder question: what does a first-timer need to know, and in what order, before a mistake costs a whole season? That brief became the curriculum.
Scripting & storyboarding
Each chapter scripted for a first-time grower, then storyboarded shot by shot.
Field shoot
Live-action demonstrations of every stage, filmed in working plantations with real hands.
Edit & on-screen graphics
Cut for clarity, with labels and callouts that make each step unmistakable.
Regional-language versions
Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam cuts of every chapter, built in from the start.
Delivery
A permanent, reusable film library the programme owns and can keep using for years.
Live-action training films · 5 chapters
The Curriculum: Five Chapters
Five chapters, because the craft breaks into five moments a first-timer is most likely to get wrong: the tapping cut, processing the latex, guarding the bark through the monsoon, drying the sheets, and grading the result. Each is produced in four languages, so a grower learns every step in the language they actually speak.
01 / 05
Four languages
Every lesson, in the learner's language
Assamese, Bengali, Hindi and Malayalam: every chapter produced in all four, built in from the start, never dubbed as an afterthought.
Why it worked
Filmed in real fields, in the learner's own language
Procedural skills transfer when a learner watches an expert do them, not when they read about them. Showing the work took out the guesswork, gave every learner the same standard to work to, and left the programme a film library it owns and keeps reusing.
And the method travels. Expert-led demonstrations, filmed in real conditions and localised from the start, work just as well for construction, vehicle repair, food processing, or any craft where a standard has to move from an expert’s hands to a first-timer’s.
On location
Filmed for real, with the people who know the craft
None of it was staged. We built every chapter alongside expert growers and shot it on working plantations across the rubber belts of Kerala, Assam and Meghalaya, accurate enough to earn a first-timer’s trust: the exact cut, the right consistency, the tell-tale signs of a good sheet, at the pace the work is actually done.
Inside the production
A run of frames from the shoot: tapping, sheeting, smoking and grading, exactly as the films show them.
Work with us
Have a complex craft to teach?
If you have an exacting process, product, or system people need to learn, we can design the curriculum, shoot it in the field, and deliver it in every language your audience speaks. The film becomes yours to reuse for years.
Or explore live-action video production, training video production, and explainer videos.
