Animation : How Can a Documentary Be Animated? by Karen "Kay" Ross

Karen "Kay" Ross

How Can a Documentary Be Animated?

I mean, we all know the ways that a documentary is "staged"... so how do you make it animated? The only example coming to mind is What the Bleep Do We Know? which uses animation to help visualize the scientific explanation that is being given from interviewees. Does anyone have any other examples?

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/bleecker-street-animated-documentary-...

Bob Harper

Waltz With Bashir was an animated documentary which was nominated for a best foreign-language film Oscar in 2008

Karen "Kay" Ross

I didn't realize Waltz With Bashir was a doc! Thanks, Bob Harper!

Hagop Kane Boughazian

I created some animations for a buddies documentary once. It was all about a sailing trip that had gone horribly wrong when the mast broke. Here are some stills from it, I don't think the film is available anywhere. https://www.axisorigin.com/#/936691967557/ Also in a previous job, we created a documentary about one of the Native American Casinos that was pretty much all animated using photos, maps, text, and anything else we could bring to life in after effects.

William Schumpert

Watched a documentary on CBS All access about the console wars between the SNES and Sega Genesis. Most of the true stories were animated to resemble 16 bit sprites.

Paul Thomas

We animated photographs for the feature documentary AMERICAN: The Bill Hicks Story - trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaUvt81gH9c

Kumar Sambhav

Alien worlds on Netflix looks like a neat documentary and it has high-quality Animation.

Manu Krishna

Thanks for this post Karen "Kay" Ross I was looking for similar references. We are working on a documentary focused towards challenges experiences by new immigrants. Planning to narrate the history and their journeys through animation.

Karen "Kay" Ross

Thanks for the suggestion, Kumar Sambhav! That's a fascinating use of animation, but I can totally see that being effective. Recapping history seems a good use of animation. Did you see Kevin Jackson's post about using animation to highlight the history of Jamaicans in WWII: https://www.stage32.com/lounge/animation/Any-other-BIPOC-animators-in-th...

Karen "Kay" Ross

Wow, Paul Thomas - that is a powerful use of animation! It really makes the pacing more frantic and really echoes the disconnect from reality. Neat idea!

Kai Omri

I made an animated documentary simply because with animation you can get access to scenes and props that my budget wont allow.

Check it out, it's about creation vs evolution and its narrated by me aswell.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/B2_XUyNgcCB/?igshid=etm0q0ptekn1

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