Little Brother - Feedback

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‘Little Brother’ animated film

Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery

Project planning
The purpose of the project was to work with members of the Museum team and students from King Edward VI College, to create a short animated film based around the concept of how someone might legitimately protest about something that concerns them. This could be through the students working as individuals, sharing personal concerns, or in small groups exploring wider ideas.
The students would be working with a professional animation artist, Chris Bradley, in the conception and final production of the film.
The film could be informal and fun but must include, as its central learning point, the concept of how an individual might find their voice when considering making a protest and discovering how their protest might make the most productive impact.
The film was to form part of a museum temporary exhibition focusing on the history of protest.
The project brief was outlined to students in October 2016. The timetable for completion was challenging, requiring 7 workshops and a final completion for early December 2016.

Strengths
Strong and encouraging ‘buy in’ to the project from the beginning from the teaching staff who were quick to vision how the project would benefit their students.
Generous allocation of teaching time and flexibility to allow students and teachers to attend workshops.
The challenging timescale of the project gave the students an authentic taste of producing material in a ‘client based’ scenario.
The professional animator, Chris Bradley, was exceptionally skilled in keeping students focused on the project. At times the rate of production slowed, due often to the intricate nature of stop motion film production. Chris, with his experience, was key in keeping things running to a timetable with a completion date looming ever closer.
Despite a small drop out rate, the students working on the project were committed and hard working, many spending their own time in completing elements of scriptwriting or model making in their own time to avoid over run.

Weaknesses
A great deal of the initial allotted workshop time was taken up deciding which direction to go with the protest theme. In hindsight it may have been better to get the group to decide this at the initial brief stage and come to the workshops with a consensus.
The delay in deciding the nature of the ‘protest’ to be animated inevitably pushed back time on developing a script and model making. This put pressure on the remaining time and inevitably led to
an over run. In retrospect, as the concept of ‘protest’ was quite wide and complex, it might have been better to give the students some pre selected areas or suggestions in order to make adoption of the theme for the protest far quicker and easier.


Production
The initial problem with production was establishing the concept and vision for the film. I think there had been an underestimation of how complex the students might find this. Once this was resolved, script writing and model making could commence.
Chris was instrumental in keeping students focused and the commitment of the students was great, particularly once they could see the direction the project was taking.
The tight timetable for the project was ambitious. If we were to do this again a few more workshop sessions would be programmed in. As it was the students showed wonderful commitment in giving their own time to ensure things were completed on time.
I believe that the students benefited from their work with Chris. Working with a professional animator they could see the amount of planning and production required for a successful project. Chris was skilled at developing a bond with the students, helping them with planning and designing all elements of the project as well as demonstrating how to achieve a professional result.
For the students to be involved in a project from conception to launch, I believe, was very rewarding. I also believe that the practical skills gained were significant, from model making, script writing, sound recording and stop motion photography. This was certainly a broad base of practical skills with a wide application for the future.

Project launch
It was fantastic to see so many of the students attending the launch in their own time. They obviously felt real pride in what they had achieved. The quality and significance of their work was echoed by Councillor Ian Lloyd, Portfolio Holder for Arts and Leisure at Nuneaton & Bedworth Borough Council. The film was enjoyed within the exhibition it complimented and appealed to a wide audience, both children and adults. Many visitors commented on the high production values of the film which I think is testament to Chris Bradley and the students involved.
For the Museum & Art Gallery it was an important project. We wanted to engage with a traditional ‘non service user’ audience, using our collections in an inspirational way and getting students involved in a meaningful project. I hope their experience was equally positive and rewarding.

Postscript
The Museum & Art Gallery were delighted that Jakob Morrison created a small exhibition of the props used in the production of the film within our Community Showcase. We can conclude with his words:
“Working on this project was really rewarding and taught both myself and the other members of the group so much about film production. The museum team gave us the brief for the film and a deadline for completion which was really challenging. Working with the artist was amazing because we got to see all the different layers that go into film production, from developing a practical story, script writing to designing sets and sound editing.
The level of detail that goes into a production like this went beyond what I’d imagined. The filming of the stop motion, making the tiny adjustments for just one shot took ages and this was just for a 4 minute film.
Everyone benefited from the project and I’d like to see how I can use what I’ve learnt by doing my