The Think Tank
From Mark BrindleAbout the film:
A sample from an interactive Sci-fi DVD made for the museum of Barnstaple and North Devon - the Think Tank is a box of objects from the museum which are taken into schools and the class is led by the DVD through a series of activities to help the children learn different skills. Generic tasks/games which use the objects, but can be used with any objects - the accompanying website www.museumthinktank.org.uk is used by teachers to book the Think Tank and to select which objects to put in it. This project is funded by the heritage Lottery in partnership with Exeter Museum.
We made an alien costume and filmed lots of live action and green screen scenes using a script by Jon Croose from means of Production and then created some 3d and 2d animation for the tasks/games and integrated it for the intro/outro. The intro film is meant to run while the box is unloaded and to set the scene so that the kids are part of the investigation team. The live action footage worked so well we had to take out quite a bit after the first tests were done. it was too interesting and the children wanted to see more of what the alien was up to, rather then getting on with the tasks! So we had to minimise the interesting footage during tasks and only show it at certain times.
A great project to work on, loads of fun filming - although a lot of the comedy gags had to be removed to shorted the intro. This is just a brief sample of a snippet of the intro and a snip of a couple of the exercises on the DVD and a bit of the outro and credits.
Update.. we won 'Best DVD' in the south west media innovation awards in 2008 for this project. yeah!!