In the episode of 21 Jump Street entitled “High High,” the team went undercover at a drug-infested performing arts high school. Detective Dennis Booker (Richard Grieco, he of the majestic hair) blended in as a student studying performance art. At the climax of the episode, he gave a spoken word performance of a poem called “Oblivion.” He then went on to bust the entire school for possessing or selling narcotics… But I digress.
Being a fan of the show and someone into these arty escapades (see “Big Cheesecake”) the scene and poem always stuck with me. “The artist lives in oblivion…” A bit bombastic, but I dug it and kept the episode on VHS.
So when Martin Solomon (my Typography II instructor) gave an assignment to create motion graphics for a song, poem, or passage, I chose the “Oblivion” poem to animate. After Effects did not yet exist, so we mocked up storyboards with marker comps and figured out accurate camera direction and time stamps to go with it. Hand-rendered Franklin Gothic and Garamond are the typefaces.
OBLIVION | Original storyboard
OBLIVION | Original storyboard
OBLIVION | Original storyboard
Each presentation required a soundtrack. In my case, a voice-over with background music. A friend who I lined up for a dramatic read left me hanging, and deadlines loomed. So I did it myself. I pushed play and record on my boom box, jumped into the poem read, then about 9 seconds in, unpaused a CD on my stereo for the music (from the movie “State of Grace”).
In class, I set the storyboards up, started the recording, and pointed to each frame as it lined up in real-time with the audio. It was a fun and inspiring project, and along with possibly everything else I’ve ever worked on, I kept the boards stored in archive.
For fun recently, I decided to dig up those storyboards and recreate them as accurately as I could using After Effects, sticking to my estimated time stamps. I made a down-and-dirty animation using my original storyboard frames (like a flip book) to get a feel for the motion and timing.
OBLIVION | Rough motion graphic animation using all 80 frames from original storyboards
Then I set to work in AE.
I got close to my original vision, but I couldn’t resist making some of the effects fancier. Even so, I kept to my original intention, and it translated really well.
BTW, this is the original VO that I recorded on a Memorex dBS cassette tape. I have three versions, all done in one take (no sound editing). There is some hiss, so I toned it down but left some in for posterity.
[Sound on]
OBLIVION | Final motion graphic animation created with After Effects