An animator for a 10-15 minute documentary project

I am a film producer and director currently studying Film Production (BA Hons) in my final year at the University of Portsmouth.

For my final documentary project, I am creating a 10-15 minute film that revolves around the effective altruism movement. Essentially, effective altruism applies evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to improve the world. My film will present the ideas of the philosopher Peter Singer (through video clips from his TED talk) and in-between the clips, personal stories will be told by people who have chosen to live more ethically. Each of my subjects will have a different social, economic and cultural background (four stories in total). Animation will be used to illustrate their stories.

The aim of my film is to express that anyone, no matter what their social, economic or cultural background, should live more ethically, in some way. I also want to show that this movement (and its community) can help people to find themselves.

I have the full support of Peter Singer and Charlie Bresler (the executive director of The Life You Can Save) to create this film and I am also hoping to generate a lot of interest from effective altruists once I begin crowdfunding and campaigning for my film. Despite this being a university project, my main motivation is to make this short film for TLYCS and to encourage people to live more ethically. I am very passionate about this movement and have been working for CEA for the past four years alongside my study.

From my animator, I will require an animation for each of the four stories, each lasting no longer than two minutes in length. The deadline for my project is 6th May 2016, so all animations will need to be completed by 15th April 2016, in order to allow me time to edit the film.

Using animation in this way will allow me to have the freedom to jump between the worlds of each subject. One of my subjects, Holly, tried and failed to find herself through religion, she then went on to work for TLYCS and loved the cause she was working for. However, her particular job was very isolating and unsociable, it was just her and her laptop at her home each day and she struggled to find motivation to work. Knowing that she wasn’t being as productive as she could, she realised that she wasn’t in the most effective career that she could personally be in. She is now working for Oxfam in a much more sociable environment and is a lot happier, so is being a lot more productive. Now, animation can creatively illustrate her transition between her different ventures, by visually making the backgrounds fall away behind her, and have new environments appear, based on what she’s talking about. Also, the use of visual metaphors can help to emphasise certain aspects of her story, for example, Holly suffered from depression and feeling isolated, and this aspect would work powerfully as an animated visual metaphor, similar to how Katerina Athanasopoulou expresses self harm in My Blood is my Tears.

There is room for creative input from my animator regarding the concept art and character designs, but this is something that we can collaborate on, and work through together. Most of our communication will be through email, yet I will arrange regular meetings for us in person, so that I can give feedback on any progress.

Animation

Projekt-ID: #9118868

Über das Projekt