We've been discussing here recently about moving type in visual presentations that create a narrative without the use of an actual voiceover or narration. I was reminded of another example that is a bit out of the ordinary. "Mankind Is No Island" by Jason van Genderen (Australia) is a short film that uses street images (people, billboard, signs, posters, etc.) to create a story of sorts with a simple and evocative message. Quite literally he spells out a story. What I like about it is that it required no expensive tools. All the footage was shot on cell phones in Sydney and New York. Simple. Brilliant. Effective. The film won the best film award at Tropfest NY 2008. Tropfest (the main event is held in Sydney) is known as "the world's largest short film festival."

Here are a few quick screen shots below to give you a feel for the treatment of text. (I added just a touch of Gaussian blur to some of the shots just to help the main word stand out a bit.)

  

  

  

  

Shot all on a cellphone
Watch the 3.5 minute film below. It's evocative and may give you some ideas for your future stories (presentations) as well.


H/T Eric Tuason

A note about Monday's webcast.
A special thank you to all the many people who tuned in around the world live to listen to the webcast from my hotel room in Tokyo Monday (my Tuesday at 7:00am). It's a real challenge speaking to hundreds or thousands of people live when you can't actually see or hear them, but it actually feels quite comfortable for me. If I had to do it over I would leave much more time for questions. Frankly, most presentation could benefit from more Q&A and discussion and less "presentation." Now, the thing that I am disappointed about is that for many people listening live, the visuals were a little (or a lot, depending on your pipes) out of sync with my speaking. On my Mac and in the studio back in the USA, it worked fine, and people with very fast bandwidth saw the preso as I delivered it (my buddies in Tokyo said there was no lag that they could tell). I had no idea that this would happen and I had no idea it was happening to people live (though it was out of my control). I am really sorry about that. The good news is that WebEx tells us the recording of the presentation has no lag problems (we shall see). If you registered before the event they will send you an email in a few days with the link to the archive (and I will post it here as well). Thanks again very much to those who watched live. (When the link is live I will post the slides on slideshare in PDF.)