1,271 is a project I worked on during the first semester of my final year at university. The brief was to create a short film and accompanying media for a social concern of our choice. The projoect allowed me to explore Visual Communication as a medium for design activism. I chose to look into the negative and rarely exposed side of Greyhound racing in New Zealand. The purpose of this project is to not only increase understanding and awareness of Greyhound racing, but also to speak for those who cannot. I wanted my moving image piece to encourage a shift in thinking in regard to the way animals are used as entertainment. Typography was a key element within the brief, I chose a simple sans serif font called Montserrat Light Italic which I kept quite small and minimal. I wanted the type to be a part of the imagery and not be disconnected from the moving image in any way so I chose to fit the text into the composition of the frames. The type is subtly animated to avoid it being static on screen, as well as this I will kept the sizing relatively small and lower the opacity so that the words didn’t fight with the imagery but compliment it instead. Throughout the film there are a number of rhetorical questions which ask ‘Did you bet on…?’, each of these is also backed up by a statistic from the sport. A key theme throughout my narrative is the fragility of life for the Greyhounds involved, I used a heartbeat sound as a signifier for this idea. The heartbeat is a subtle sound that runs throughout the film and correlates to the mood/energy of the current moment. During very tense moments, the heartbeat will become faster and louder and eventually slows and fades out at the end. I went for a multi-layered approach to the audio to mimic the atmosphere of a race. The sound effects include barks, mumbling from spectators, commentators and general noise I recorded at the races. To view the full moving image piece, click the link below.
https://vimeo.com/275570900
