Referendum Explainer Video

Client: Wisconsin Farmers Union
My Role: Storyboard, Design, Animation, Sound Design & Mix

This project involved the creation of a 2-3 minute animated explainer video for the Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU) to educate voters on two upcoming ballot referendum questions. The client required an engaging and informative video that could simplify the complex verbiage in the actual bill for a general audience. The challenge was to present the information in a clear and concise manner, while still capturing a viewer’s attention.

Concept and Design

Since the video is all about added bureaucracy. I really wanted to lean into the concept by emphasizing the paper aspects of government: money, calendars, constitutions, and ballots. The visual look used paper and paperwork as texture, utilizing a bold color scheme that featured red to symbolize the red tape that a YES vote would introduce. Documents and photographic elements were treated like black and white photocopies with texture and grit intrinsic to the medium. This approached resonated with the seriousness of the topic while maintaining a visually interesting aesthetic. 

Using these key themes, I found style reference from throughout the web and created storyboards in tandem for client to review and collaborate on.

Referendum explainer video storyboards
After the boards were approved, I fully designed four key frames that were emblematic of the style that the rest of the video would be.
 

In creating the graphic design for this project, I wanted everything to be as “Wisconsin” as possible. Photos and documents are very specific to Wisconsin and the vast majority was sourced from a deep dive into public domain sources (Library of Congress, Flickr CC0, Wisconsin Historical Society, and Wikimedia Commons). I was sure to extend this to even the smallest of details in the video, like recreating an actual Wisconsin state quarter in 3D for late in the video.

3D Wisconsin Quarter

Production

Production went quite smoothly! The spot was produced in Adobe After Effects and, for the most part, all the 3D elements were done natively in-app to expand my understanding with some of the newer 3D features.
 
Since After Effects is still quite limited in the 3D space, I used a novel technique to create the constitution that involved clever use of master properties, precomping, and rotation to achieve the bends in the correct axes.

Production Steps

  • Initial Design Idea & Style Reference
  • Storyboarding
  • Key Frames & Music Selection
  • Production Frames
  • Voice Over Booking & Mix
  • Animation
  • Sound Design

For the flooding scene, I knew I wanted to create water that was somehow formed out of paper. After some initial exploration, I found some ripped page assets that remarkably looked like waves and created a stop motion image sequence on 2’s of these assets, carefully warping them in time with a reference video.

Paper water animation example

The Wrap-Up

Overall, the project was a huge success. I’m very proud to have achieved a cohesive and stylish explainer to break down an important issue. The client premiered it at their summer conference and had colleagues sharing how impressed they were.

The video was shared on social media in the lead-up to the ballot referendum and contributed to Wisconsinites voting NO on this referendum on election day.