DIGITAL DIALOGUES

TYPE IN MOTION

Here I'm going to keep things simple because in the real world it wasn't very simple to achieve the final outcome, which I don't consider totally concluded yet and will definitely improve it in the very near future.

First challenge was to choose one piece of dialogue. After watching hundreds of interviews and showing them to the group I chose one that, in my point of view was funny and clever. (A bit too neutral though which I realised during the process).

The first idea was to have a head on screen where I would represent him as the brain and her as the mouth because it's clear that she's not quite understanding what's going on and doesn't really get the joke until the end of the interview.

After some feedback the idea changed  a bit and then I would just play with the interviewer's talking and thoughts, which changed again, when I realised that the silent bits were as important as the dialogue itself. And if I used the silent moments to try and express what she was thinking, it could distract and overload the spectator with inexistent information. I should then have nothing on screen to reinforce that she has nothing to say.

I used chalk on blackboard because it's quite childish and innocent and also reminded me of jokes we used to do in school when I was teenager. Also producing my own type-faces was good fun.

The blackboard itself didn't really work well unless I had used stop-motion animation, but one of the aims was to get to know After Effects and use it for this project. I adapted the style so I could digitalise the images, create photoshop files and animate it using the software.

Storyboarding was essential to keep me on track and organised, and with a wide overview of the project and it really helped when I had to cut some parts. Though it's a very simple one, in there I had all the information I needed: times, sound and what's on screen and where and when.

This is the final (to be revisited) outcome:

As promised, I revisited this project using a more apropriate and seductive technique: Stop Motion animation. It's only 7 seconds long, but it works so much better than the last version! It's now more tangible, we can feel the textures and the type interacting with the background.

Leonard Cohen from Mariana Lopes on Vimeo.