503 Moving Pictures - Initial Ideas

In response to the audio clip and the brief, I wanted to focus on representing the content of the audio clip with typography. My initial ideas include using words and letters to communicate what Tiffany Dufu is saying. The target audience for the video is women of all ages, to show them that they are not the only ones that find themselves not having enough time, and to empower/encourage them to realise that they must not always be the ones to do everything. 

Idea 1:

Create a story that uses words for objects/people instead of illustrations, and moves through the story as smoothly as if it was illustration. The use of words instead of illustrations would be intriguing for the audience as I is something different. It would also allow the words to be manipulated more drastically/exaggerated, to allow the atmosphere of the clip to be manipulated easier.

Idea 2:

To visualise what Tiffany Dufu is saying in the audio clip by using words and sentences that represent, but do not always directly repeat what she is saying. I would not want it to be a 'lyric' video, but rather use typography to enhance her words. I want to create an atmosphere that would feel hectic and busy, to reflect what Tiffany Dufu is saying, how women have too much to do and do not have enough time. This is the idea that I favour more, and will start to develop. Below is an initial story board of what I would imagine the video could look like, and how each part of the audio clip could be represented.

Initials Sketches for Idea 2:

One of the first frames I would want my video to be is the visualisation of the "70 women" that attended Tiffany Dufu's workshop. For this reason, I imagined that it would be appropriate to personalise the video by having 70 different women names pop up. I also thought that if the names were hand-written, it would make the video feel more personal, and more relatable to the target audience of women.

For the same reason as having hand-written names, I thought that having questions presented to the viewer/audience in handwritten lettering would also make them more personal and relatable to the audience. It would also make the viewer/audience more likely to take in the question and think about, making them reflect upon their own lives. 

I considered having some small illustrations within the video, as I thought that maybe if the video was only using typography/words it may not be enough to communicate the message of the audio clip well. However, I realised that typography/words can be manipulated in a way that allows for things to be represented more abstractly but still clearly, without their needing to be a drawing to show that. Also, I thought that including illustrations would have weakened the impact of the video and audio clip, as it would only distract the viewer/audience with interesting illustration rather than allowing them to concentrate on the audio clip and really understand what is being said.

Initial Digital Experiments:

From my initial idea, I wanted to test how the '70 Women' frame would look like if it was all handwritten, and the names quickly appeared onto the screen. For this, I made a simple gif just to visualise how it would look. I found that having the names hand-written made the quality of the gif/moving image quite poor and unconsidered. The messiness of the grid of names doesn't feel as relatable or personal as I had hoped, and more poorly done than anything. I decided that although having the list of names quickly appear and fill the screen was effective, having them hand written was not.

(Due to technical difficulties I was unable to upload videos my blog, so I will use screenshot to demonstrate my moving image development)

One of the frames that I planned within my initial ideas was to question the viewer/audience "All the things I would do on my Ideal Day?". To do this, much like the '70 women' names frames, I though it would be appropriate and effective to have the question handwritten. Although this proved to look quite appealing and personal when complete on the screen, due to the nature of editing a scan, the moving image/motion graphic of the clip was not as smooth as I had hoped. Having the question hand-written, although worked to an extent, did not create exactly the feel/atmosphere that I wanted, and failed to become a smooth and clear visual moving graphic. For this reason, I decided that it would be better to work with a hand-written typeface instead, and went on to experiment with that.

Trying the question in a hand-written typeface proved to be much more successful, mimicking handwritten style by having each letter flow individually made the typeface feel more natural. Using a typeface proves to be more effective, as it looks cleaner and more professional. The idea of it being personal and relatable is still present, due to the way the text flows. This particular typeface may not be the most suitable, however, the same hand-written natural effect can be applied to any typeface and so is effective and versatile.