Documenatary
Canada’s Dark Secret (2017)
by Al Jazeera
Summary
The story of Canada’s residential school system and the indigenous survivors who bear witness to its abuses.
Message & Goal
To reveal the truth and history of residential schools in Canada. Educate the public about what was done to indigenous people in history, and how the current government works with the people to solve the issue.
Roles
Produced by Newstime Productions and Al Jazeera
Residential school survivors
Former RCMP officers
Government officials
Typography
Dramatic type and bold heavy type to emphasise the problem, serif typefaces to suggest the feeling of history.
Audience
Suitable for all ages (no graphical scenes) to understand more about Canadian Residential schools.
Featured People
Roberta Hill- Residential school survivor
Ron Shortt- Former RCMP officer
Gerri Butler- Ron Shortt’s life partner
Denalda- Residential school survivor
Bud Whiteye- residential school survivor
Carol Cauchi- daughter of a residential school survivor
Senator Murray Sinclair-former head of TRC
RY Moran- Director of the NCTR
Marjorie Ovayuak- residential school survivor
Eugene Arcand- residential school survivor
Justin Trudeau- prime minister of Canada
Text
2:53 Greatest Tragedy in our whole country
Years that were taken away from children
A racist policy
16:56 Punished for who you are
Lots of tears
Thousands and thousands of children are being abused
27:10 Even the sound of breaking glass scares me
31:48 I knew where I came from, but i just didn't know how i fit in
Seven generations of native people grew up with no roots
Truth and reconciliation
Healed
46:50 there is always hope, without hope, we’re done
Workflow Sheet
Story Board & Notes
Style Frames
Sequence Test
I reduced the effects to clearly figure out the sequence.
Sound production
For the background music and sound effects, I am considering something sad and heavy, and fire sound effects to work with the visuals. I have also took inspiration from Jeremy Dutcher’s indigenous twist to classical music.
I brought these ideas to my friend Heeru, and explained the background history of the documentary, my concepts built in the type then she composed a piece to set the atmosphere to the title sequence. As we both have multi-cultural experiences, we have a lot of different ideas while creating the piece together, we had fun creating the sequence.
type used
completed sequence
After the last critique, I took in the ideas from my professor (Breck Campbell) and made some visual changes to the title sequence.
showing “great” and ‘country” big and bold to create a movie poster effect, and illusion that Canada is a “great country” before showing “tragedy” (the truth and real meaning of the sentence)
slicing the word “generations” to illustrate the meaning of not having roots
flicker effect added to “reveal”
combined phrases like “staying strong” and “future”
reversed the sequence of “Canada’s dark secret” to lighting the fire to burning wildly at the end
worked with my friend, Heeru, to create music and sound effects
Final Refinements
Typo on “future”
Reveal of “tragedy” for a more tragic look
Make “of our whole” to appear word by word
Easing the blur transition for a long period of time
Phrasing of “native people grew up” and “with no roots”
Mask reveal of “with no roots” when part of “7 generations” dropped instead of fade in
Reveal “revealing hidden history” letters in random order before flickering
Increased pause after (black screen)
Revised tracking on cursive type and the whole animation on that part
Frame pause on “we’re done” for emphasis
Slightly slowed down the start of catching on fire for main title
Sped up the catching on fire part
Eased the zooming in
Frame pause on “Canada’s Dark Secret”
Ease of final fading out on fire to credits
Reflection
To be honest, I was never interested in Indigenous and residential school issues. I have only slightly learnt about it during high school but it was very brief. Working on this project gave me an opportunity to learn more and fully understand our relationship with aboriginal people and what did our government did to them in history. Although we are still far from reconciliation, I appreciate Canada being open and tried to educate Canadians about this historical event., as many other countries still try to cover up their dark histories and their people became more ignorant. I even have the chance to educate my Chinese friend that I have met during my exchange about residential schools, while working on the sound effects and music for the piece. Other than that, creating type animation with music is very new to me. I am happy with my final outcome as I am still very new to time based design. I think utilizing all the knowledge from previous years of YSDN is the key to being able to create successful time based work, as the animation base off of compositions, typography and concepts built in to them.