People often ask what we do on a Political Tour.. and we can tell all sorts of stories about the adventures we’ve had. But sometimes it’s difficult to sum it all up in an elevator-ride length answer.
Animation however seems to have a solution. A while back we came across the UK’s Royal Society of Arts animation series in which their lectures are illustrated by animated whiteboard drawings. From complex new theories about human psychology to economics and mathematics, they seem to do a great job of bringing things to life. An animator it seems can pretty much illustrate anything.
So just two weeks ago we sat down with Jonathan and Max, the creative and illustratative talent behind Beluga Animation, a London based company, to create a story board (literally a strip cartoon that maps out what the video will look like but in still pictures). We need to take visitors to our site off the beaten track and on one of our trips around the world, we explained. They’ll meet with local people in far flung places, witness the key events such as big electoral rallies and demonstrations, and then get to put questions to the politicians and decisions makers at heart of the story.
Jonathan and Max devised a plan along those exact lines and we wrote a script. A few days after that we joined John McCarthy of BBC Radio 4 fame in a Soho studio. John had interviewed me some time back for the travel program Excess Baggage and travelled with us for the program to Kosovo. He kindly agreed to help us. In no time at all we created a one-minute video summing up very simply what we do. We think it works brilliantly. Do let us know what you think.
Nicholas Wood
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