Case Study - St. Mary's College Project

We were approached by a representative from St. Marys College after a public screening of a community film we made called Animating Accy. After an initial brief discussion at the screening followed by several e-mails, we met with the St Mary's publicity team to discuss ideas for a short promotional film, aimed at attracting students to the college. This was a really useful session where we shared ideas, and discussed different ways the project could proceed. At that stage the concept for the film was quite loose, although we all had a good idea of what we wanted the film to achieve.

At a second meeting, the publicity team had developed their ideas further and begun to fix elements that they were keen to include in the film. We started to look at specifics like how to include lots of information in a short space, and which students might work well as interviewees. The college were keen to showcase their impressive facilities, and it was at this stage that we suggested mixing live action interviewees with animated characters, to ground the project in real life.

We filmed around 3 hours of interviews, and the first process back in the studio was to select the best sound clips to work with. We wanted the interviews to flow as a story leading from subject to subject. After constructing a 10 minute version of the interviews that covered all the points we were asked to cover, we sent the sound file through to the team at St. Mary's so they could feedback and input into the final sound edit.

At this stage we constructed a short 'teaser' clip animation, using a section of interview that we loved, but were not planning on including in the final film. This gave us the opportunity to test out character design, and ensure that the St. Marys team were happy with the style of the design before creating all the characters.