Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Sketch (for planning out the storyboard).

Password: foodwaste

Research / Concept 

We live in a consumer-driven, capitalistic society that vilifies—or at least diminishes the value and the importance of  reduction, recycling, reusability. This entire semester has been a focused research on how I could produce an educational, simple video that highlights the way  people can reduce their waste on an individual level. During my research, I learned that 55-60% of food waste occurs at the individual level. Thus, I wanted to produce a video that focused on how people can change their consumer behaviors!

My main goal to inquire questions about the ways people see the norms of waste and open dialogue concerning reasonable, practical, and convenient ways to think about Earth as a place that houses our future, our families, our society. As a whole,  the video allows people to consider the ways they can reasonably reduce waste not begrudgingly as an obligation but as a mean to assure the future is as clean, safe, and wholesome for all.

Furthermore, what I wanted to emphasize in this video the importance of food waste and how our consumer behaviors can reduce harm on Earth. One of the research I had read emphasized the effect on food sent to landfills and how it becomes methane gas, which contributes damage to the climate. Thus, I want to highlight facts like how methane doesn't linger as long as carbon dioxide, but it is more dangerous to the climate because it is effective ability to absorb heat.

Hopefully, through a concise and simple video of the way food waste can be reduced, people understand food wastes' environmental influence on the Earth and how it is not an invisible or “unimportant” issue but actually one of our critical issues in our lifetime. Given how we only have one Earth in the universe, and the mistreatment of our resources, especially on a consumer level emphasizes the way we are not careful or mindful of our direct and indirect effects on the Earth.

Here are the facts I collected from my research:

1. 1.3 Billion tons of food are wasted every year, which equals to $1 trillion dollars of wasted or lost food!

2. The average American throws out about 240 lbs of food per year!

3. Food waste happens on various levels: 20-25% on the manufacturing level, 15% - 20% on the retail level, but the chunk of the waste happens on the consumer level at 55%-65.

4. Rotting food that ends in the landfills produce a lot of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas than Carbon Dioxide. It is dangerous to the climate because it effectively absorb heat and it is 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

5. Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water, food waste represents a great waste of fresh and ground water resources.**

6. Throwing out even one kilogram of beef is wasting nearly 50,000 liters of waters that were used to produce that meat.**

**I could not include these facts in the video because of the time constraint, but in future revisions I will include scenes depicting these facts to add more details and depth to the video. 

Design Strategy

For my design strategy, I wanted a pop-esque, vibrant color scheme that has a nice style that resonated with millennials. I also wanted to approach the style of the video to include a lot of colors, so I chose from my color palette primary colors such as red, yellow, and blue. Then I built around the color palettes to include basic colors from dark navy (almost black), light teal, and lighter shades of blue. 

For the minimalistic look that wouldn’t be overpowered by the video, I chose the simple font Avenir and used it in light and bold strokes. 

Overall, the look of the video was eye-catching and flexible, because it allowed me to use a lot of other colors outside my color palette without being too kitsch or out-of-place! 

There were also other elements such as circles, solid color backgrounds, and scribble illustration that create the unification of those elements for my video. 

Mood Board

Critical Reflection

Part of this project was learning the technical skills of using After Effects, alongside with improving my skills in Illustrator. However, because I was  able to approach this project from a holistic and more open-minded approach, I learned a great deal about food waste!

There were things that intersected my interests about environmentalism, social consciousness, and reductionism, which is why I was very passionate about this project.

Therefore, I loved learning the tiny bits about reducing food waste. The most important goal I wanted to achieve from my video from a concept idea was changing the ways people see the norms of waste and opening dialogues concerning reasonable, practical, and convenient ideas about Earth as a place to not ignore and dump. But as a place that houses the present and the future. Most importantly, I took away from this project is think more about facts that appeal to people’s emotions and logic, because both of those appeals allow people to grasp the concept more tangibly through feelings, empathy, and facts. 

From a technical perspective, I had a fun time coming up with what I wanted to narrate. But, there were aspects of the project, as I was doing it alone, that proved to be very difficult. One of them was illustrating all my assets, being organized, and trying to figure out how to get an asset from Illustrator to After Effects. And, how would my still images translate to an image enhanced by motion graphics principles? Learning the process from beginning to end was an enlightening learning experience, which made me realized the importance of organization and time management. Those two skills were the most important reasons why I was able to finish my project, but it is through learning how sound worked with the video. I don’t think it worked perfectly. However, I was thankful for the opportunity to see through a project from the very beginning to end where I controlled the aesthetics, writing, and content, which is impressive as any big project like this one would prove to be extremely stressful. 

One thing to consider, which is a true weakness of the video, is the fact that my sound and volume  were not my strength. (I removed my voice over because I was embarrassed but all the facts and the transitions all make sense). In fact, based on what I saw from the video, I can admit that I have grown a lot in design. However, I am still limited by my skill level, confidence in my current skill level, and overall proficiency in After Effects and Illustrator. 

Central to this video, specifically, was how to communicate through visuals and research (not to the point of being overbearing or redundant) the importance of social consciousness concerning the Earth and people's individual waste without offending people. Overall, this project was worth my time and effort in making something that highlights an important issue in our society!