It’s gonna be hard not to comment on the content of “The Story of Stuff” because the whole thing is so awesome.
One thing that immediately struck my mind while watching Annie Leonard’s videos was the massive amount of planning involved. Not only did they have to write and rewrite the script and research all the facts, but they had to line up the drawings, animate them, make sure they aligned with the script, and fit into the overall message of “The Story of Stuff” project. The movies are all part of a series, so even though the first video came out a few years ago, it was going to be one part of a large project. In this way, they made sure that the first video was a template for the others. Even what Annie Leonard wore – her hair back, a button-down shirt, and slacks – remained the same, if in different muted colors, in the other videos.
The images – simple black-and-white pen drawings – were chosen because they were easy to animate, yet stark and could be refined as needed. Selective color was added to emphasize points. Leonard also editorialized, as she explained why she chose an image of a person to represent government, instead of something autocratic like a tank, and why the corporation image – a large, round man – is so big compared to other images. While this, like everything else, flowed so easily, I imagine that the choice to comment on the type of representation used involved a lot of discussion and rewriting.
Everything was integrated really well. “The Story of Stuff” project as a whole, which includes the website, the several other videos (“The Story of Cosmetics,” “The Story of Change,” “The Story of Electronics,” etc.), the logo and the blog, all has the same aesthetic, simple, black drawn ink in medium strokes, with blue to offset the black and white. The videos rarely use color, except to illustrate something specific; in “The Story of Stuff,” at the end, when she talks about changing the distribution method, the colors turn from black to green to highlight how the whole thing could become an environmentally sustainable enterprise.
The distribution method – how the stuff gets made – serves as a navigation bar for the viewers. As Leonard moves through the process, each one is zoomed into focus, animated, and then a series of segments illustrate facts and statistics about its part in the ecosystem. When the segment is completed, the particular image (like the big box mart) then goes back to its position on the top navigation. This navigation also is consistent with the other videos, highlighting how different aspects of the world (electronics, cosmetics) go through these channels. It’s a reference point for viewers, too, as it underscores the messages Leonard is conveying.
Leonard is an environmental and sustainability activist. The Story of Stuff Project takes a lot of dull issues – the lifecycle of a product, for one – and animates them. Movies, infographics and other visual representation of data are very in right now, but I expect them to continue to be important, as there is so much data to make sense of and the Internet enables the transmission of illustration of data in different ways. Some things might be simple to do, as when comparing her old computer to her coworker’s new, slimmer one, but even highlighting how the component parts change – but are not interchangeable – keeps a viewer’s attention more than a speech or a screed could.
Even nonfiction works are getting into this illustration game. One of the best books I read all year was The Cartoon Guide to Economics. I thought of it as an illustrated textbook. Since I had never taken an economics course and knew nothing, I thought this would be a good way of learning the basics about a subject, and it was. Since the books were published in the last two years, they used current examples and explained some of the debates circulating hot-button issues. This was way better than listening to a series of lectures.
Sometimes it might seem silly or obvious to illustrate something, like having the cartoon version of Leonard walk in a store, look at clock radios, pick one up and wait on line to pay for it, as she’s narrating the entire sequence. In a traditional film, this would seem redundant. But to make her larger point here, she needs to explain her thoughts, which were prompted by this action, and the viewer needs the images to match with her voiceover, or else they will become confused and not pay attention to what she’s saying. The drawings here, the animated clips, are soundless, and serve to illustrate Leonard’s points; they have to reinforce what she’s saying, and so both the images and her script have to work in tandem together. It’s also noteworthy that she doesn’t usually explain where she gets her numbers, since that would get in the way, but viewers can download the annotated scripts, which have the sources used.
Everything on the website, including the quizzes, buttons, drop-down menus, and links, are in the same style. The consistency underlies the consistency of her message – that we can move to make a change in the world so we aren’t beholden to corporate interests and can reclaim our environment, making it safer for all of us.