Project Overview, Goals, and Concept
The idea of the animated infographic project was to create a short animation designed to educate or inform on a subject of my choosing in a quick and concise manner. My goal for the project primarily, is to get a good level of planning under my belt before I start animating, something I struggled with in the previous project. Visual aspects of the project would be to create a fast moving, and informational graphic, that's also pleasing to the viewer in terms of satisfying what audiences usually expect from these types of videos (educational, entertaining, humorous - especially with the advent of TikTok and Instagram and popularity of short-form videos).
During my research for a topic to cover, I found the bizarre story of the 'slowest music ever'. In 1987, American composer and music theorist: John Cage, wrote Organ²/ASLSP, a composition with no notated tempo marker, instead Cage left a note to simply play it 'as slow as possible'. A group of musicians & scholars set up a uniquely crafted Organ in a small Church in an East German town. The notes on the Organ take a very long time to change, recently the longest interval between note/chord changes was 7 years, between 2013 and 2020.
A key message from the ASLSP project proprietors is that the project will last for “as long as peace and creativity in the following generations exist". To me the project is symbolic of time, and how much of it we are afforded in life. I'd like to focus on this point in the production.
A key focus of this assignment was the soundtrack, I recorded the voice over at home on a studio microphone, I found some royalty-free stock sound effects online and also produced some ambient music, as well as some of the actual chords that the organ plays. I produced and edited all of these sounds in Ableton Live & Reaper (digital audio workstations).
Ideation
Wanting to keep the animation kinetic and always flowing, I thought that including a moving background element would be a good way of showing motion in the otherwise mostly static sequence at the beginning of the animation - I used the idea of a moving background gradient (sort of like a lava lamp effect). I also wanted make the church scene sort of idyllic, even if it's not entirely accurate to the actual location in Halberstadt - so I went with a nice simple mountain scene made in Illustrator. I also thought it might be fun to add a bit of humour with an "old-timey" newspaper fly-in, complete with the associated music.
Thumbnails
I knew I wanted to incorporate musical staves and sheet music into the animation; using a playhead that stops and starts on different notes while playing the corresponding chord was a fun idea that I wanted to use. A few ideas from my thumbnails ended up in the final animation, such as the metronome at the beginning, the church & newspaper shots.
Storyboard
After struggling with the storyboarding process in the Kinetic Type project, I really tried to be as comprehensive as possible with this one. I ended up having to cut some of these shots as the animation ended up clocking in at slightly over 2 minutes.
Style Frames
Style frame made mostly within Illustrator as vector art, these frames remained mostly unchanged in the final animation.
Feedback
During the project, after showing my storyboard and script to my assessor, I was advised to try cut it down a bit as it would be too much to animate, after editing my script a bit and cutting some shots from the storyboard I shaved off around 30 seconds, but still left me at around 2 minutes, which was a little daunting, but I went with it as I felt much of the material needed context in order to be understood effectively. Visually there were a couple of issues in the earliest version of the animation that were made aware to me through feedback: I was using a large variety of typefaces and was advised to cut down to at least 2 - 3 for the main type elements. There were some other smaller issues, such as typeface kerning & tracking.
Reflection
The biggest lesson that I learned was definitely the importance of planning, this project involved writing a script so that the voice over recording process would be smooth and as streamlined as possible. Having my storyboards ready to go before jumping in allowed me to create more refined assets that are much more effective than haphazardly created material.
I learned a bit about recording voice over and treating the recording environment to reduce spill from other noise sources, as well as post-processing audio to make it sound a bit better, these aspects of sound recording/sound design are something I'm interested in outside of this project.
Some technical aspects involving animation that I learned included: animating vector elements for the first time, and the flexibility (and challenges) that go along with using them. Using engaging, but subtle transitions to effectively keep the 'story' flowing in a satisfying way.
Overall, I'm really happy with how the animation turned out, I found the subject matter interesting while researching it and I felt like this project came together much easier than my previous attempt - the pieces just fell into place. I was able to learn and utilise two mediums I'm really interested in (audio & moving visual) and marry them to make something I'm proud of.
References
ASLSP by Edition Peters - Issuu n.d., issuu.com, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://issuu.com/editionpeters/docs/www..editionpeters.com>.
BBC 2020, ‘John Cage musical work changes chord for first time in seven years’, BBC News, 6 September, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54041568>.
Candy, S 2008, As SLow aS Possible, Long Now, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://longnow.org/ideas/02008/10/02/as-slow-as-possible/>.
Cross, A 2020, An insanely rare musical moment will happen Saturday. - Alan Cross, Alan Cross’ A Journal of Musical Things, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://www.ajournalofmusicalthings.com/an-insanely-rare-musical-moment-will-happen-saturday/>.
Gonsher, A 2019, A Visit to John Cage’s 639-Year Organ Composition, daily.redbullmusicacademy.com, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2019/04/halberstadt-john-cage-organ-feature/>.
Neely, A 2018, What is the slowest music humanly possible?, YouTube.
Roberts, MS 2020, John Cage chord change: what’s the story behind ‘As Slow As Possible’?, Classic FM.
Universes in Universe n.d., John Cage Organ Project in Halberstadt, universes.art, viewed 2 June 2022, <https://universes.art/en/specials/john-cage-organ-project-halberstadt/>.
Wikipedia Contributors 2021, As Slow as Possible, Wikipedia.