Freedom, The Flash Experience

My kinetic typography assignment is call Freedom, for the exact reason that freedom is the main focus of the solo the clip is to. It was done on Flash MX and Adobe Illustrator for some of the more difficult animations.
I was extremely excited when first assigned this kinetic typography assignment. Off the bat I knew exactly what audio clip I was going to use, and the message I intednded to convey with it. I chose to go with a more dark, urban mood, to match the song’s feeling. K’naan’s song “In the Beginning” brings up the importance of children, and their freedom. The song portrays the issue of child brutality and even brings police brutality to attention. With such serious issues I needed to convey a lot of deep thoughts into my clip.
The first issue was selecting a text. I needed a bold text that could be easily visible, even when words are up for a short amount of time. Tertre Extra Bold fit this perfectly. It bluntly displays the lines and stands out on the stage. For the more emphasized lines in the clip I needed a more intense looking font. Punks’ not Dead matches the song’s darker urban mood and really adds feeling to each line. This in my opinion was the most successful technical solution. It sums up all the moods throughout the whole clip into one font.
A lot of the main focal points in the clip go along with what K’naan is saying at the time. A candle lights up the dark when he says light a candle, and a heart appears when he says hearts we fill. These decision I believe were successful in directly portraying the message of the song into the clip. The text and content would also alter with the mood of the solo. The beginning of the solo has a much more calm mood, and for this reason I chose blue as the background. It gives it a more suggestive feeling and leaves you open for the more blunt messages towards the ending. The last half of the clip I mainly used a black background, to make the font have maximum contrast, making the words really stand out. I feel I was successful in using the right colours to stick to the songs feeling.
I am very happy with my final product because it is exactly like I imagined it being. All my initial thoughts were constant throughout all work on the clip. If there was one thing I would change on reflection it would be the detail in the background. It would be nice to see more than a flat colour in the back, maybe some pictures of buildings and alleyways here and there. I believe I made up for it by having a lot of movement in the clip. Probably the most difficult technical challenge was having the words keep up with K’naan’s fast flowing lyrics. Because it is rap the amount of words was very difficult to work with. So many lines had to be coming from everywhere at all times, and this made it challenging to keep up with the transitions. All in all I feel I was successful in this assignment, and really portrayed my initial message I intended to. The work was worth it and it is satisfying to see the final results.