Gordie Center / RegionTen

About

I created a series of 12 videos for the Gordie Center, some in collaboration with RegionTen. The Gordie Center focuses on educating university students to prevent hazing and substance misuse, while RegionTen provides services related to alcohol and drug misuse for a broader audience, including both parents and children.

These videos were produced in After Effects and featured a variety of animation techniques. They ranged from advanced character animations using Adobe Character Animator (imported into After Effects), to motion graphics and text, as well as simple character movements that added dynamic elements to the videos while staying within budget.

For the Gordie Center, I created the following videos:

Healthy and Unhealthy Organizations: A guide to identifying "healthy" clubs, sororities, and fraternities at university while avoiding "unhealthy" ones that engage in hazing.
Safe Party: Tips on how to host a party safely where alcohol will be present.
Situational Tolerance: An educational video explaining how the body reacts to alcohol differently in familiar versus unfamiliar environments.

For the collaboration between the Gordie Center and RegionTen, I produced these videos:

Alcohol on the Developing Brain: A message for parents to talk to their children about how alcohol affects the developing brain.
Alcohol Use for Elementary School Students: Encouraging parents to start discussing the dangers of alcohol use with their children early, even at the elementary school level.
Alcohol Use for Middle School Students: Advising parents that teaching their middle schoolers to argue calmly and respectfully can give them the confidence to say no to drugs when offered.
Alcohol Use for High School Students: Informing parents that allowing their high school students to drink at home, even just a sip, can increase their chances of developing alcohol use disorder.
"PUBS": An explainer video outlining the four key signs of alcohol poisoning.
Arguing with Your Teen: Emphasizing that how parents handle arguments with their teens can influence how their kids respond to peer pressure.

Most recently (2024), I created the following videos:

Active Bystander: Encouraging parents to focus conversations with their teens about drugs and alcohol on being a good friend, as teens are more receptive to this approach.
Express Disapproval: Highlighting that parents are the most influential figures in their children's decisions regarding alcohol consumption, and expressing disapproval can have a significant impact.
Uncomfortable Situations: Advising parents to teach their children how to leave uncomfortable situations, such as by sending a secret emoji text to get picked up.

Audience

For the Gordie Center videos, these were targeted toward university students. The challenge here was to provide genuine and authentic situations, while not talking down to them.

The Gordie Center / RegionTen collaboration videos were primarily targeted toward parents.

Starting Materials

Basic narration in the form of a word document

Process

The starting materials in these cases were in good shape. The trick was to make sure the videos hit the durations indicated by the client. Some were to be a max of 15 seconds, some 30, and some over a minute long. It was a challenge to take out the important parts of the video, leaving some out, while still maintaining the integrity of the message.

Scripting for video is different than scripting for an eLearning module. Our script differs by instead having four columns in a landscape Word document. One column for narration, one for images, one for onscreen text, and one describing the expected movement of the elements on screen altogether. Different rows were for different "segments" of the video to help with organization, however the audio was meant to flow seamlessly from one segment to the next. Unlike eLearning modules, we give the narrator one large document of the narration as opposed to splitting it up. Sometimes, this requires editing the audio in Adobe Audition to make sure the timing is correct.

508 Compliance

These videos did not need to be 508 compliant. However, we did provide Closed Captions in the form of SRT files. The video is imported into Premiere after it has been finalized, and the captions are auto-generated.

Videos

These videos have been made public by the Gordie Center on their YouTube channel.