Conscious Creatives: Sustainability of Fungi - Design Development

After the the full narration recordings were done, it was determined that the length would be closer to 5-6 minutes long. The design considered cutting it down, but was determined to include all the information and produce a full documentary production. 

The narration was recorded fast and slow, however as the information was very dense, it did not want to be too fast to take in.

The design also considered the production context, being an exhibition space, keeping it long meant that it would most likely be played on a loop, and therefore the audience can join from any point and still learn something / take something away from the piece, due to it covering a broad topic. 

Accordingly, the design development looked into ways to produce more visual outputs in a fast amount of time and did so with editing software.

Imagery development:

The design wanted the end result to be vibrant, playful and stimulating. The visuals intended to communicate the otherworldliness of this plant kingdom, and thus depict the supernatural. Similar to how data / the world wide web has been presented in film, with a futuristic tone of voice. The documentary wishes to visualise another world that humans cannot see, thus to show its full depth there was somewhat freedom to play with layering, colour and form. Especially with the widely associated word 'magic' with mushroom, meant there could be a quality of this within the design decisions.

Accordingly, the design then started to edit the initial individual videos, adding layers that reflected the narration, for example:

• 'fungal diversity' would have repetition
• 'mosaic of cells' would add a tiled effect
• 'internet hackers' would have glitching
• 'new life will spring' or 'deceased matter' would add colour or take it away, or produce a skeleton
• jargon words like 'seeds' 'roots' 'carbs' or 'bonds' embryonic / cell style depictions would be made through mirroring techniques 

 

Reforming:

The documentary didn't want to be too loud that it lost its authority. As such, using AfterEffects colour was tuned down at times, to keep a less broad colour pallet for certain sections. 

Developing further, sections of similar imagery were grouped and exported as one to make the AfterEffects file easier to manage. Hence, in order to manage so much content (6 minutes) and avoid length rendering times, the videos were done in sections, rendered and exported as whole .mp4 files to be edited over. 

Introduction and Credits:

Once the main body was complete, the design played with sound for the intro and outro of the documentary. To translate the initial idea of an old computer, keyboard typing sounds were found, as well as an old computer fan, combined and edited in to communicate this element of an old 'internet', that we are just learning about now, as if one was searching www.fungi online.