During the briefing we were given a quick overview of what we would be doing. It was explained that the task was to create a one to two minute piece of documentary animation on a topic, that was of a high enough standard to be submitted to a film festival. Furthermore, the normal specification were in place such as the format for the video and the requirements for the project as a whole, including the one thousand word evaluation and expectations when it came to blogging. It was also explained that the project was a group project, similar to the previous brief and the size of the group was between two and three. Following on from this, were then given four categories to choose from that would create the topic for us to cover in our films. The categories were;
- Mental Health
- The Environment
- Sport
- Family
I found the next section of the briefing quite interesting. We were asked to write our names onto a slip of paper and place them onto another piece of paper each labelled with one of the briefs, so place it onto whichever theme we wanted to work with. I placed mine onto environment as I had the most ideas at first glance for this theme. Afterwards, our names we each picked out and read from the respective categories. Martin and Sara went round the class and we each said which of the themes we liked the idea of along with our initial ideas and what roles feel we wanted to pursue and which we thought we did well. This was so if there was a chance to help out another group if they needed anything doing, and you were available and willing to participate and work with them. Since I chose environment my initial ideas stemmed from a lot of different things. Firstly, I was interesting in producing a documentary based on nuclear energy. There is a lot of information about nuclear energy and it's a huge industry, so my thinking was that it would be a good opportunity to educate people on the subject of nuclear energy, whilst also educating myself a long the way. My second idea and one that would probably have been the most fun for me to do due to a good level of pre-existing interest and knowledge on was a specific area of cosmology. I was thinking of exploring the solar system, quite a simple notion that everyone knows a little about but I think the majority of people found the system that our planet is located in fascinating to learn and think about. Another area of cosmology I wanted to look at if I were to go with this idea was black holes, and the more complex aspects of deeper space, millions of light years away from where we are. This would have been more of an epic, and in many ways foreign in terms of material for people, thus being quite educational whilst maintaining a similar level of engagement as some of the more familiar aspects of cosmology to most people. Something that I liked to think could have been an opportunity with this type of documentary was the ability to explore different mediums and be a little more abstract with the different methods of animation within it, because of the abstract nature of the material. My last and final idea was looking at animals and taking a little about their habitats and the environments in which they live, this may have been difficult due to the time constraint and would have been limited to just one or two animals.
The roles I mentioned that I was interested in fulfilling for this project were the pre-production and post-production ends of the process, although I am happy doing any role necessary I do feel like they are my strongest. I was also interesting in the writing and directing side of the project as I feel like I have a good level of organisation and experience working on different aspects and roles when it comes to the production process.
We were sorted into groups based on our choice of theme and the roles we work best in, Callum approached me and suggested we work together because we had the same theme and Gavin joined us to form our group of three. We had a short amount of time to discuss our ideas before the end of the day and I felt like despite only spending a very short amount of time in the afternoon talking over our ideas I feel like we laid a good foundation for the project. I'm looking forward to what we produce during this module, and as a fan of documentary animation and documentaries as a whole, I feel ready to create something hopefully worthy for an animation festival.
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