Automating on-screen consent for sensitive productions

Who are Chwarel?

Chwarel is a media production company based in Wales, working on well-known productions across the UK. Their work often involves fast-moving, sensitive documentary settings where compliance is critical.

The Challenge: Explaining consent and why it’s hard

Producers are responsible for ensuring anyone identifiable on screen has provided consent. That’s straightforward on controlled sets with cast lists and planned releases, but it’s a real challenge in dynamic, sensitive environments such as hospitals, public spaces, and crowd scenes.

At Chwarel, this process was handled manually:

Producers stayed after hours reviewing footage to identify faces

Consent records weren’t consistently digitised or searchable

Missing contact details made follow-ups slow and unreliable

Late discovery of non-consented faces led to emergency blurs/edits, harming quality and timelines

The result: wasted time for high-value producers and directors, avoidable stress, and heightened compliance risk.

How we helped: Digital workflow + AI face-matching

We designed a practical system that fits the production day and integrates smoothly with post-production:

On-set consent capture with photos and structured records per project

Automated face detection and matching at ingest against the project’s consent images

Smart flags for scenes with unmatched faces to drive clear follow-up actions

Searchable audit trail for consent status, forms, and contact details per person and per project

Results: Less manual effort, better compliance, higher quality

Significant reduction in after-hours producer review

Faster, more confident compliance sign-off with clear auditability

Fewer last-minute blurs/edits; improved final picture quality

Time saved for senior creatives, reallocated to directing and storytelling

A scalable workflow Chwarel can apply across productions

A Partnership for Innovation