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

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Story Board & Notes

Initial storyboard and effect ideas

Initial storyboard and effect ideas

Revised storyboard

Revised storyboard

Notes after critique

Notes after critique

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

type used-pr3.png

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

Notes on refinements

Notes on refinements

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  • 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.