Introduction

For the junior Documentary Project, we were challenged to find a topic that we wanted to go in depth through research and share to the public. Students were asked to produce an interview based research paper for English, an article magazine based off the research in English, and an elective class final project. My elective class, Animation, assigned us to make a short animation film about the research topic. This unit emphasizes and pushes students to develop their skill in researching and gathering first and secondary information, profiling interviewees and preparing a story for a narrative journalism, and also further strengthen their style and techniques in their individual elective.

English

For English, I wrote a narrative profiling research paper about Noh, which mainly focused on my Interviewee, Hikaru Morishita and his experience as a Noh performer. It was interesting for me to relate his personal experiences and views about how Noh should be preserved and also shared in the future to my own research. This particular project was a challenge to me, because I was unfamiliar with profile based research paper, and also because many people were unfamiliar with what ‘Noh’ actually is.

Click on the illustration for a PDF to the research paper

Animation

For animation, I decided to make a short animation documentary video about my topic: Noh. Noh is a Japanese traditional theatrical art that has been preserved since more than 600 years ago. The reason why I wanted to research about Noh was not only because I was interested in the preservation of Japanese art, but because of my uncle. My uncle is a professional Noh performer and now a teacher in Japan, and through his influence, I have seen a couple of Noh plays since I was little. However, I was clueless of what Noh actually was, and since this unit involved interviewing and profiling an interesting character, I wanted to take this opportunity to not only share what Noh was to others, but also throughout the process of researching, learn more about Noh myself.

Process of Work

Shown below are some of my animatic images, pre-production work, as well as concept design and planning.

For animating, I use the software Clip Art Studio, and this is what my workspace looks like while animating.

The green and the purple layers that overlaps the actual layer is called onion skin, where it allows you to reference the previous and the new layer for a smoother transition and motion. In the picture above, an illustration of a feet is at a still, standing position.

In this frame, one foot is being raised, and in order to exaggerate the speed of the foot raising and stomping onto the ground, I added blurred lines in each of the frame.

I also added subtitles in the animation video, since the audio was based off of my interview with the interviewee, Hikaru Morishita in Japanese.

Final Animated Documentary Video:

Magazine Article

Click on this image for a link to my article

Photo Gallery