Proposal Approved

 

Van Phan + Anti-Bullying 360 Animated Film

Van Phan + Anti-Bullying 360 Animated Film. Our film aims to raise awareness of the negative impact of bullying and how bystanders can make a difference by standing up against it.  The film touches on the trauma caused by social, verbal, physical, and cyber harassment. From subtle social isolation to unrelenting cyberbullying, bullying can leave its victim hopeless, defeated, and overwhelmed.  Through a 360 animated film, the audience gets immersed in a 3D digital world.  Inhabited with backpacks that come to life, these backpacks represent children and allow the audience to connect.  The film centered around the periods of a child's school day; recess, class time, and after school.  We investigate the relationship of the person getting bullied, the perpetrator, and the bystanders.  We illustrate how bullying transforms not just the person who gets bullied but also the bystander. The film uses linear structure and experimental visuals to show the many facets of bullying.  It starts off as a conventional linear narrative and surprises the audience with jumps in timing, scaling of character, and space. This film hopes to entertain, educate and transform the viewer and have them think.  As a bystander, what can they do to make a difference?  

While making the film, we want to use the viewer’s body movement and environment staging to experiment and test a VR workflow.    The use of body movement will be used to support the narrative arc of a film.  Less body movement at the story's beginning and more action during dramatic scenes.  Props and environment can also be used to guide the viewer's attention.  Exaggeration in scale and time will support our characters' psychological state.  Characters that lose status will get smaller, while characters that gain power will get larger.  Using the camera height and proximity to characters will also help reinforce the characters' psychological state.   Sound and music will support the narrative, guiding the viewer’s attention and helping to describe the space.

This is a 360-animation film, so the production process is different from a traditional 360 film.  Pre Production planning is essential in making it run smoothly.  The project will take real-time-rendering of the Unreal game engine to create our VR experience.  The VR animation pipeline needs to be finalized, and the characters must be rigged and tested before we animate.  Modeling, character rigging, layout, and animation will be performed in a 3D animation package.  The Unreal game engine will be used concurrently at the backend for work of texturing, lighting, and rendering will use Unreal.  As animation is very labor intensive, the process will feel more like a marathon than a sprint; there will be fewer contributors, but more will ask the people involved.