60 Second Documentry - Initial Ideas

I began generating ideas by brainstorming things I enjoy or I am knowledgeable about. Some of these included 'badass women of history', 'how to brew tea' and 'the origin of tea'. Many of these ideas felt too long to explore in 1 minute and had to be refined to ensure they could be achieved and fulfilled in a short space of time.

Idea 1: Tea For Every Mood'

My first idea was to create a video going through several different teas and their purposes and uses. I planned ways that the teas could travel across the screen using stop motion. However, after some research, it became clear that there is such a wide variety of teas and they have so many different purposes it would be difficult to condense this into one 60 second film. Instead perhaps one tea could be explored for it's properties. Although part of the brief suggests it should appeal to everyone and by only including one type of tea, it may narrow the audience.

Something I looked at which could have been used for the video was a style of stop motion which used tea leaves to tell a story. This could have been interesting to explore further, however this a time consuming process, which would have meant the final video would have suffered in quality. 

Another interesting video I looked at was a tea box animation, where the teas travel across the scene, brewing themselves. This again could have been an interesting style to explore, although it could have been quite plain without funny comentary or an unusual background.

Idea 2: 'The History of Tea'

http://www.tea.co.uk/tea-a-brief-history

http://www.tea.co.uk/history-of-tea

After doing some research on the history of tea I came across some interesting anecdotes about Chinese and Indian origins with the discovery of tea. This was another idea that I thought could be creatively conveyed through paper stop motion. I actually found a video covering this topic too which was useful, although it meant that the design would have to be quite different to this to be original.

I also printed out some images to experiment with to taste how the stories could be told through simplified collage stop motion. Although the experiment produced interesting results, which could explored further in future, the idea felt too complex to achieve within a week.

Idea 3: 'How to Help a Drunk Friend'

Another idea was to create a tutorial on ways to help a drunk friend. However, I decided that perhaps my knowledge was not extensive enough to approach this topic. Ethically it would be important to give advice that is medically approved and not just general research found online. For example, an accurate depiction of the recovery position might be difficult to achieve without possibly misinforming.

 

Idea 4: 'Origami Tutorial'

The final idea was to use the paper craft to create an origami tutorial, this felt like an idea that was fairly simple and could be explored thoroughly within the time given. Different types of origami were looked at, originally I thought a crane would work quite well - yet this proved difficult to condense within the 1 minute set up. Instead I studied some origami patterns and thought a whale might work a lot better.