Carry a Poem trailer #3 - concept art

Previous instalment: Making the animated trailer #2 - the pitch

Once we'd pitched our idea to City of Literature things started to happen very fast. The first task was to create a project programme, so everyone knew what needed to happen when. We had nine weeks to complete the trailer – including the Christmas break!

Next job: try not to panic.

Next: design. We needed a street that would be Edinburgh-esque, but it couldn't be a real street. We wanted to have more different buildings (a school, a library, a bank, some shops, some houses) than you'd normally get in a single road. Adam's first sketch (in ballpoint on the back of a printout) made us realise we also needed to play around with the scale – Edinburgh’s wide streets and tall buildings wouldn't quite work:



After much thought and drawing, Adam produced concept artwork to go to City of Literature for approval:



The response was joyful but thoughtful – the sketches kicked off a huge discussion about which poems should be included. Were we allowed to include swearwords? (The eventual decision: no). What tone was needed – inspiration or angst? Should the poems be familiar or new?

Three cheers for the Scottish Poetry Library, and Peggy in particular, who took on the poetry selection and came up with a list of extracts that everyone was happy with... which meant that we could start having a lot of fun designing the murals!



This post can also be found on the Carry a Poem website: Making the animated trailer #3 - concept art

Carry a Poem trailer #2 - the pitch

In early November 2009 we received the first Carry a Poem sketches by illustrator Emily Isles – showing the logo design, sample page layouts, and a series of Emily’s lovely illustrations. The branding came across very clearly, so we could see exactly what we needed to work with. We had two days to come up with a concept to pitch.

The illustrations immediately started us thinking about a hand-drawn look and feel to the animation, with plenty of white space. The letters and paint splodges (which we started calling the poetry cloud) looked dynamic, so we could imagine them floating around, and maybe spelling out poems... wouldn’t that be pretty?



And, there was the problem. Prettiness wasn’t what we needed. The brief had identified that the animation needed to be playful and a bit subversive. We needed to break away from the obvious.

We agonised.

Adam and I had some very robust discussions. Well, arguments. We couldn’t come up with the right approach, and we had very different ideas.

We agonised some more.

Then... Eureka!

We started thinking about urban art as a visually rich way of presenting words. Supposing, we thought to ourselves, someone carried a poem down the street but the poetry broke out in letters and paint splodges – where would that poetry cloud go? Could it splash the walls and leave murals behind?

We liked the idea of creating a literal interpretation of the effect of someone carrying a poem – showing that it could change the world around them. We also thought it would look great to take the poetry cloud from the book illustrations and put it into the real world.

Our pitch to the City of Literature went down well. We all got terribly excited about places that could be transformed, ways of carrying poems, and poetry that would make great murals. Next step: concept art and poetry selection.

This post can also be found on the Carry a Poem website: Making the animated trailer #2 - the pitch

Carry a Poem trailer #1 - the brief

Here at Binary Fable we started thinking about the Carry a Poem animation back in October 2009, when Ali and Anna at EUCL first briefed us. My scrawly notes highlight that the trailer should promote the campaign and should get the poem-carrying message across.



One of the big issues we talked about was branding – learning from last year's reading campaign, we were all keen to make sure that the branding of every element of Carry a Poem was consistent.

The other big issue was the target audience. The trailer is aimed at a secondary school audience and we talked a lot about how to engage young people with poetry. I wrote down words like "fun", "playful", "subversive = good" and "undermine po-faced-ness"!

This post can also be found on the Carry a Poem website: Making the animated trailer #1 - the brief

Carry a Poem viral

We've nearly finished the Carry a Poem animation. In the meantime, here's a sneaky preview: