Veterans of Color

Project Brief:

RCAD Concept Development I MD 210 F11 Section 02 

Project 3 – “Veterans of Color” Film Opening Title Sequence   

Creative Brief 

The Client: 

Mark Parry 

Project Overview: 

To design the opening title sequence for the documentary, “Veterans of Color”. 

Project Description: 

Veterans of Color is a documentary film that follows the fascinating history and personal stories of African American military veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam. During this period veterans fought two battles, one as a soldier, and one against racism in the military. The film explores how this struggle continued in civilian life after the service and how each of the veterans persevered and accomplished tremendous success.  Includes interviews with a Tuskegee Airman who flew combat missions in WWII, Korea and Vietnam; a retired Army Lt. Colonel who spent an additional 20 years with the CIA and retired with the equivalent of a two or three star General; a Vietnam veteran who became the highest ranking African American in the New York City police force and was the Chief of Personnel on 9/11; a Korean veteran who became the first African American vice president of one of the largest universities in America and who was appointed to three commissions by Presidents of the United States; a WWII & Korea veteran who landed at Normandy on D-­‐Day plus one; and a veteran of the Army who became one of the first executives of a major corporation in the United States. 

Process & Deliverables: 

•      The client will present the project to you and you will have time for Q&A to gather information to 

help you gain insight on his documentary, his goals, likes and dislikes, creative direction, etc. 

•      Research the time period this film spans, the wars, the culture, civil rights, etc., to get background 

information on the context for this film.   

•     Use your own personal process to develop an idea direction for your title sequence.  Pull from what we’ve studied that works for you, i.e., a variety of idea generation methods, developing mood boards, sketch’s, rough story boards, etc. Remember to consider the tone/personality/context of Mark’s film. What mood do you want to set?  What is the “story” you can tell in the opening sequence?  (Don’t forget there will be a string of soundbytes preceding your open). 

•     Research and collect necessary assets, including exact names/titles, photographs, footage.  Search the Library of Congress and National Archives and shorpy.com for copyright-­‐free images. Use Mark’s assets on Webshare, as reference or as actual images in your design. Configure order of title sequence per Mark’s handout. Give attention to fonts, hierarchy, layout, movement, readability, color palette, etc.  

•      Prepare to share your idea direction in whatever form you have (sketch, rough boards, mood boards, 

etc.) 1:1 with instructor on 11/28 

•      Develop storyboard 1 

•      Bring storyboard 1 to class on Thursday for group input or 1:1 input from instructor 

•     Refine and finalize storyboard 2 in Photoshop.  Include concept statement, frame images and descriptions (don’t forget to include camera direction and transitions), music if you have it and anything you believe strengthens, supports or clarifies your concept and pitch. 

•      Pitch storyboard 2 to Client on 12/5 

•     From Client feedback, revise storyboards and deliver final storyboard to instructor on 12/8. Include a style guide. Be sure to put your name, concept statement, title of project and frame descriptions on your storyboard.

•     Maintain your blog to document your process along this assignment.  Upload research, idea generations techniques, mood boards, rough storyboards, and final storyboards.  Write clearly about what you expected, what you learned, why a specific concept was selected as the one to develop, any technical or logistical challenges you encountered, your experience with critique, why and how you may have altered your direction from the rough storyboard> final deliverable.  Include a wrap-­‐up summary.

INTERVIEW WITH THE DIRECTOR:

From the interviews he did, he got the idea of compiling bits and pieces of the interviews and put them into a larger piece.

He then went on to  create a 10 min promotional trailer in order to get the money to produce the film

Based on stories of triumph.

The Conflict: people willing to serve their country, yet they were being discriminated.

Feeling they want to evoke: admiration, victory, hope, personal and intimate, 

Opening credits: set-up the movie. Get the audience prepared. Tone, content, 

End credits: strait forward duty. 

Length: around 7 secs per tittle card, around 1 minute long no longer

Purpose of the film: Give viewers a little sense of what happened during that time period 

Audience: over 55 set 

Perception of the military: a life changing opportunity with good and bad. Keep it as neutral as possible. 

frame rate: 23.97 

MY DIRECTION

I wanted to play along with the idea of these soldiers being manipulated and mistreated as if they were toys thrown around from place to place.


STORYBOARD

The style I would like to use would be that of a 3d parallax where the images appear to be realistic and 3d but are actually flat. Which goes along with the notion of having realistic toy images that has the viewer wondering whether or not they are actually people, seeing as they clearly were not treated as such.