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Aug 5, 2011
Category:  Behind the Scenes
Contributor: DCGEP

Drama, Education and Animation = A unique look at HIV

Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership (DCGEP) partners with Curious Pictures and Masters & Savant to create Inside Story.

Curious Pictures a premier production company has a reputation for being one of South Africa's most innovative and exciting production houses – home to both independent filmaking and filmmakers. Through social dramas like “Intersextions, “The Lab” and “Heatlines”, Curious Pictures tackles a wide variety of relevant social issues through the innovative use of solid story telling.

“We have an absolute belief the story telling is the most effecting tool for education and if you want to change the world you use stories to do so. And that’s why the project is so interesting because it uses story and science to make a very important point and convey very important information. We believe very strongly in using media for social good and that’s essentially what we do.”  Harriet Gavshon, Producer

Even though Curious Pictures has a reputation for producing dramas that focus on the social implications of HIV, Inside Story offers a unique opportunity to do something different. Throughout the story animation will transport audiences inside the body to see how the virus acts, revealing the true nature of the disease. 

Bringing the animation to life is the award winning animation house, Masters & Savant. Animators will create the dramatic inner world of the body to show how the HIV virus enters the body and begins its relentless attack of the body’s immune system.

“Setting the stage for this inner drama is our task. While the project is in edit we’ll be developing a look and feel for the 3-D animation. We’re building a reference for all the we’ll illustrate by using anatomy journals, microscopic photos scientific drawings that will all inform how we design our inner world characters. We always strive to be accurate but we also want to be accessible to our audience, so we may use color-coding to help audiences understand how all the different inner world characters interact to create this attack of the immune system. Our job is to demystify the battle that rages inside Kalu our main character’s body. George Webster Visual Effects Supervisor--Masters & Savant”

“It’s really exciting to go inside the body the way we’re going to be doing and plot out exactly what happens and see how the virus works inside the body and this medium is so well suited for that and that’s very exciting. It’s very exciting to work with sophisticated computer graphics to do so and try and visualize it, but also to do so in a way that doesn’t disrupt your pleasure it’s has to itself be a pleasurable experience it can’t be oh no this is the educational part, it has to be seamless and entertaining and informative.” 

Harriet Gavshon, Producer--Curious Pictures

Stay tuned for more.

 

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