ENGINEERS CANADA: BUILDING BLOCKS
Hey McMillan Vantage 👋
We’re really excited about bringing this new project to life. Before we get to the building stage, we’d love to outline our story with as much detail as possible so we can all be aligned to the same creative path. To do this, we’ve compiled several elements below that will be key to moving us forward to the next stage of development of our story.
Our Core Ideas
Based on the original brief and script, we’d like to put forward some concepts that we can agree will be the focus of our piece. From the script we can break down categories for each section of Engineering that we’ll be covering to the following:
- Engineering in medicine/health research
- Engineering in city Planning/urban areas
- Engineering in clean energy generation
- Engineering in prosthetics & rehabilitation
Translating these broad concepts to our video, here are some idea starters for each that could be showcased. We’d like to keep the focus down to a single hero idea or concept per scene. If we like multiples its possible one could appear in the background as we focus on a main anchoring idea. And we will avoid the cliche of building bridges 😉
Medicine/Health Research
- DNA Helix being modified in a super macro shot
- Microbial organisms or cells, being affected by a new medical treatment
- An advanced piece of medical equipment such as a super powerful microscope or MRI machine
City Planning
- a busy congested intersection full of vehicles & construction becomes streamlined through the addition of stop lights or roundabouts
- a rail system or public transit initiative helps ease the flow of traffic in a busy city
Clean Energy
- a field of wind turbines
- a landscape of large solar panels
- a hydroelectric dam
Prosthetics & Rehab
- a concept designers office space, as a prosthetic leg blueprint materializes from sketch into the real world
- a closeup of a prosthetic foot & leg as it makes first contact with the floor
Style, Look & Feel
Script Outline
With the above ideas, here’s a version of how the story flow could be imagined:
| We open in a hallway, the camera rushes forward through a set of doors, bringing us into a bright and clean lab. The lab is defined yet clearly not photorealistic – the environment is composted of bricks and building blocks but still recognizable as a medical setting due to its lighting/colour palette. | VO: Engineers don’t just build things. They build solutions to make our world a better place. |
| The camera zooms towards a piece equipment and through a transition we are transported down to a microscopic level. We see a DNA strand form from tiny cubic building blocks coming together. Similar DNA strands can be seen assembling in the deep background. | VO: From new therapies that give hope to those facing a cancer diagnosis, |
| The camera whips and we’ve been transitioned to a congested city road with cars backed up along a freeway. New traffic lights are assembled from our building blocks. The traffic congestion is eased and the cars start moving forward. Our camera pans over the scene and transitions again. | VO: to smarter cities that help keep our loved ones safe. |
| We glide over a vast building block field. On the horizon wind turbines begin to assemble from our building blocks. Our camera whips and transitions again, bringing us to a designers office. There is a blue print on a nearby table. | VO: They build new ways to harness renewable energy to create a better, tomorrow for our grandchildren, |
| A prosthetic leg seen in the blue print materializes from the paper and is assembled before us made from our building blocks. It makes confident contact with the surface as if ready to be fitted to a recipient. | VO: And they make today brighter by sparking the confidence of a young child taking their very first steps |
| A camera transition takes us to a more abstract white space. With a similar building block style as the rest of our scenes, components of still photos assemble before us to form a full picture. We see our real life engineers. | VO: Because in the end, that’s what engineers do. They build hope for a better world and a better future for us all. Canada’s Engineers. Building tomorrows. |
NEXT STEPS
Our next steps include receiving any feedback or additional ideas on the story flow/script. Once we have these locked in, we can proceed to the animatic stage. This is where we begin to block out all the scenes, camera motion, and rough objects; we present them through wireframes in an edited video.
THANKS
