Blog Post #4: Framing

When coming up with ideas for my design, I contemplated how I would be able to present the animation alongside the educational infographics in a manor that seemed logical and didn’t break the flow of the piece. I chose to go with the style of a 1950’s public service announcement/education video, along the same lines of the Troy McClure videos that most people would recognize from the TV series The Simpsons.

This is where the use of framing came into play. Through use of images, words and context, framing manipulates people to alter how they think about something by drawing on their social values and the meanings they give to these phrases and imagery. There are two categories of framing, positive and negative. Positive spins actions in a safe and encouraging manor while negative will often deter the audience.

So it may seem strange to use framing in a design that requires me to be unbiased and keep a neutral view about the positives and negatives of the data I’m displaying. After all, I’m supposed to be leaving the choices of how to interoperate the data up to the viewer so they can make choices on how Ningaloo should be changed. But rather, I have used framing in the style of my animation to change the audience’s mindset to be more open to receiving information when viewing it. Let me explain.

While commonly used by the media, politicians and advertisers, framing can also be used in things like film and TV to make audiences feel a certain way towards objects, locations and people. They can still be positive and negative too, like seeing a man from a low camera angle in a dark setting will often negatively frame him as a bad guy.

This is the technique I have used in my animation. I’ve used various image based uses of positive framing to establish my animation as a fun, appealing educational film. The filmic grain technique I put over my animation is to make it seem like you’re really watching an educational film. Having the projection screen fold up and down in between animations and the map selection screen also helps push this ideal, as well as the general style of the piece relating back to public service announcements, a medium known to be associated with learning. When the audience see these things combined, they instinctively know that they’re about to watch something that is aimed at educating them and will change their mindsets thusly. They’ll pay close attention and realize they need to be listening to get what they need to know.

However, I also knew that public service announcements do not interest everyone, and are in some cases more likely to bore audiences instead of interest them in learning. This is why I added in several things to my animation. The main character Jimmy is done in bright colours and is animated in a bouncy and lively fashion. The backgrounds are vector based and are again filled with vivid colour. The infographics are quirky and inventively representational of their subject matter. And the humor that spaces out the information also keeps the audience at ease. These attempts to frame the animations in a light-hearted, bright and positive light allows the audience to see that its not just an educational film but something that’s fun too. Their willingness to learn is therefore increased and the chances that they’ll stay to watch the rest of the animation are increased.

While not the most traditional or obvious use of the framing design principle, I still feel I have used its techniques to help influence audiences to see my project in both an educational and approachable manor.