Rational

"WHAT I SEE"

Advanced Animation 3H03
RATIONAL

Written by Nicole Wilk

Our video follows a Chinese high school student, Suki Bai, as we wished to explore the experience and relationship of an individual who has newly made Canada their home. In order to incorporate her experience as more universal we utilized silhouettes with many wide-angle and establishing shots. Still, her young voice and hesitant English draws the viewer to her experiences and her opinions.

As Suki is exploring the clashes and blending of two cultures, we explored combining craft and vector art to tell her story. We felt aesthetically that Flash backgrounds would be flat and unappealing and that the program should be used primarily for animating the identical silhouettes frame-by-frame, and After Effects to be used for effects. The raster images were compiled in Photoshop and consisted of scanned papers and textures used to pull the viewer into a world that is factual to Suki, but fantastical to many Canadians. With this in mind we chose vivid but unrealistic colours to brighten her perspective.

We wished to incorporate an upbeat but repetitive (not distracting) soundtrack for the background audio, but also one that could be incorporated with the separate animation sequences at the beginning and end of the interview, one that could tie everything together. The opening sequence hints at the video to come and creatively provides a place to introduce the art and title prior to the interview, and the ending sequence incorporates a new twist on a previous scene. 

Formally we explored the immigration experience in Canada as observed by Suki Bai; aesthetically we combined mediums (non-digital to digital, raster and vector, colours and black & white, 2-D and flat); and technically we utilized a wide range of equipment and programs such as Canon Rebel ti, scanner, T4N Handheld recorder, Photoshop, Flash, Premiere, and After Effects.