CASE STUDY
DISCLAIMER Before we begin, here is a link to the film ‘JAM’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MShUswReXd0 I request that you watch the video before delving into the case study. Thank you!
INTRODUCTION When I returned to India from Muscat at the age of 16, I couldn’t muster the courage to navigate a scooter through the uncontrollable traffic jams of Pune like the rest of my college friends. This made me turn towards the city's bus service for help and to my surprise, I loved the experience! But very few people agreed to give it a try it due to the stigma of unrealibility that revolves around public transportation in India. Six years later, as an animation student at the National Institute of Design, the concern lingered on at the back of my head. This prompted me to make a short animation film (that was pitched to my sponsor ITDP), as part of my graduation project, that not only throws light upon the real problem but also promotes an impactful solution.
THE SPONSOR Serendipitously, ITDP organised a public transportation awareness event in Pune exactly at the time my idea was conceived. In order to get my idea some real grounding and exposure, I pitched the idea for the film to the organisation. The idea was received with an enthuastic response and it was a huge advantage to work with a pioneer organisation in the concerned field. The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) is a US-based non-governmental non-profit organization providing technical assistance to cities and local advocacy groups on sustainable transportation development throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Being a pioneer in solving problems related to Public transportation, ITDP had years of data and case studies about the Indian public transportation system. After a thorough research, multiple talks and discussions with the team, these were the problems shortlisted to be addressed in the film.
PROBLEMS 1. In India, the general image of public transport is not particularly encouraging. Based on frustrating past experiences, citizens are hesitant to give new public transport systems a chance which in turn discourages the government from investing in further improvements, triggering a vicious cycle of apathy. 2. This situation fuels the ever-increasing demand for private vehicle ownership which further immobilises the role of the public and government in bringing about a change in perception. 3. Serious secondary problems caused due to rise in private car ownership include rise of petrol prices due to increase in demand, increased pollution, increased traffic jams causing raised stress levels in individuals.
SOLUTION The solution that we arrived on was to promote the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system which was first employed in the city of Ahmedabad in India in the year 2009. Since its introduction, Ahmedabad saw an exponential rise in the number of public transport users and significant improvements in the levels of pollution and traffic.The system was so successful that it was even awarded the Sustainable Urban Transport Award (2010) in Washington. We decided that the film’s primary audience should be the government so that they help spread better transport systems throughtout the country. The film would even otherwise serve as a PSA for the common audience.
WHY ANIMATION? While sending out messages such as this, films run the risk of sounding preachy or boring. Animation as a medium allows us to portray the problems in a light hearted yet impactful manner, it allows you to easily steer into imaginary situations and transitions which would otherwise be difficult to explain. Stylized graphics, color pallettes and quirky characters can make the film stand out and easy to remember thus magnifying the impact of the message.
SCRIPT AND STORYBOARDING. The film went through multiple rounds of scripts and storyboards, each one done with extensive research and discussions. Script sharing brought out various thought provoking points like. 1. The importance of including an elderly person amongst the commuters in shot 1 to draw attention to the problem of public transport being an inconvenient mode of transport for the elderly. 2. Get share rickshaws into the picture as they are direct and the foremost competitors of the bus and often make the passengers travel in extremely uncomfortable conditions. 3. Try to incorporate the direct benefits of the BRTS for the community (shot of a physically challenged person getting into BRT easily because of a leveled platform added) 4. Show how BRTS helps reduce traffic to a major extent, as one of the main arguments for getting the BRT system into the city is that it takes away one entire lane away from cars dedicating it to only buses ( shot of 60 cars falling into the BRTS added) All these were incorporated and the final script and storyboard was arrived at. Below is a small part of page 1 of the storyboard. To see the entire storyboard click on the link, To see the entire storyboard click on the link, http://issuu.com/ketkijadhav/docs/storyboard/1
INDIA!. Everybody travels in India, and the majority of them choose the best possible option … PRIVATE VEHICLES!
aye!...khe khe khe!....share karega kya?
aaaaaaaa!!!!
old man nods head, hand comes and drags him out of the frame. swinging by one end of the rick and screaming
While a few of them think that it is cheaper, better, and more “ahem..! uhhh” sustainable to wait for the bus…
some soon realize that they are WRONG! old man pulls chain.
Time ticks on and … time is money!. haha… Nobody likes to wait forever!
ELEMENT AND CHARACTER DESIGN All the space, transport, costume design etc. have been designed from research and field study of the Ahmedabad BRT to keep it genuinely true to the system. All the characters in the film were designed by keeping in mind all the typical daily commuters to will bump into in India. The gestures and behaviour of the 3 main characters in shot 1 i.e the office guy, the old man and the environmentalist were designed keeping the following points in mind. 1. Office guy: He represents the largest public transport user section, the working middle class. He is always angry because the buses are late and he has a tough time of it at the office. He has no option but to continue using the bus because of the rising fuel prices. 2. Old man: Represents the elderly commuters who want to be independent but are too old to operate a private vehicle. 3. Environmentalist: The people who are trying their best to spread awareness but give up due to the quality of the system.
COLOUR SCRIPT The mood of the film is first satirical, commenting on the flaws of public transportations and then it becomes inspiring with the introduction of the BRT system. The colours too follows this by first being in browns, greys and muted pastels and then becoming bright yellow and oranges, greens etc and thus help strengthen the mood of the film.
PRODUCTION The narration in the script was professionally recorded with a voiceover artist. An animatic was created by timing the rough movement derived from storyboard perfectly with it. With all the pre-production in place, I began animating. The film was animated on Flash by the ‘frame-by-frame’ hand-drawn technique. The spiral shot described later was the most complex piece of animation in the film. It required vehicles to be modelled in 3d and then placed under a moving camera. The process for the 3D animation has been shared on the last page. All the shots were then composited together on After Effects and layered with ambient, foley sound and music.
SPIRAL SHOT: 3D ANIMATION
Five models ( car, rickshaw, scooter, scooty and a bus) were modelled in Maya. The models were then textured in Photoshop with a thick hand drawn border exactly like the vehicles in the films. top left row shows the vehicle models bottom right row shows textured version of the car and the rick.
The sketch made above is the original concept art for the spiral shot. The same shot was recreated in 3d by first modelling a 3d spiral ( the road) and then filling it up with the textured vehicle models. All the vehicles had to be indivially positioned on the spiral. Then a camera was set up on the maya scene and animated to get exactly what was visualised in the animatic.
This is short concise case study of Jam, to see a detailed case study click on the link http://issuu.com/ketkijadhav/docs/behance_5feba670e38dbb/1