My most recent piece of work is this 9'00" film about Sperm Whales. I had one week to make this educational video for a school in Athens targeting 6-12 year olds.
Being told it could be whatever length needed I starting researching on Wednesday and by Friday had condensed the research, scripted it (to be child friendly) and done the shot list. This was then checked over by my manager, relevant changes made and translated into Greek.
While I was waiting for the script to be finalised I started gathering the footage on the shot list together from the media library and organising it into folders in the project window of Premier. I also started making graphic illustrations using Adobe Illustrator to help portray the information more clearly to children. It was good the DVD was for children and I could add these images as there weren't enough images on Creative Commons websites and we didn't have enough footage to cover all the relevant subtopics.
As the first time using Illustrator, and with the time constraints, the images I made were very basic. Drawing them freehand using the paint brush tool I googled photographs and cartoon images of the sperm whales and other things I was drawing for a guide/ inspiration.
When the script was finished I recorded the narration and started putting the non-fictional footage in the time line while my colleague started putting colour on the graphic illustrations to save time. Some of the illustrations I made were no longer needed because of the change in the script.
I had drawn human beings next to Sperm whales and things like this to help the children relate to whales being animals like us in order to create understanding of these sensitive and intelligent creatures. I made many references to people throughout the script and the drawings reflected this style. But when the script was translated and changes made this no longer applied in the same way, so some things were left out. When I have more time I may make changes to the illustrations which have been used so they are more fitting, as we will use this DVD for other purposes in the future too.
Because I had used quite an illustrative style – rather than graphic – I didn't want to use block colours or have anything too bold. In fact block colour, in my limited knowledge of this software, wouldn't be possible anyway, as none of the lines in the drawings were joined. Therefore we decided on shadowing, highlighting some parts in colour, and very occasionally colouring parts.
Monday and Tuesday were then spent editing and making any changes to graphics, including the translations as some of the graphics reflecting the size of the sperm whale had already been done by another volunteer for a previous project. Because graphics were used from a previous project this means the style throughout is inconsistent, and though this doesn't affect the fluidity or understanding of the piece it would be nice when I have more time to make it uniform. At 10.30pm on Tuesday night, after 15hours at the office, I was finally putting the music on after things taking a lot longer than I anticipated, in a chicken and egg situation of not realising how time consuming graphics could be...or rather, it was time consuming because of my lack of experience with graphics!
Anyway, it has now been sent to them, and I am generally happy with what has been produced in a week and with finally using In Design and learning a couple of new skills. I find the prospect of things you can do with this programme quite exciting and hope to use it for more elaborate sketches / sequences in the future.
I have included pictures of the basic original illustrations (above).
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