GRAMMAR & PUNCTUATION - CASE STUDY

Grammar and Punctuation is a series of 33 x 5 minute animated films created in conjunction with Espresso Education and broadcast in schools via their online subscription service. The series helps teachers navigate the latest national curriculum which now requires technically complex grammar and punctuation rules to be taught to children at a young age. Shortened versions of the films are shown here.

We began by developing a range of different styles, structures and ideas for delivering the content in engaging ways. Espresso were really keen on two of the proposed routes, but needed the style to fit with projects they had done in the past. We combined their favourite ideas from the proposals and altered the style to fit their other material.

We made four episodes during pre-production to test and refine the precise structure of the videos, the best techniques to use and the collaborative process itself.

Colours and contrast were evaluated very carefully using video projectors of the same type found in classrooms to ensure that the picture could be seen clearly in what are often far from ideal viewing conditions.

Each video begins with some character animation followed by a teaching section mostly consisting of animated text manipulation. Espresso came up with outline stories which fitted with their teaching objectives and we reviewed them in terms of how successfully we could make them into appealing and involving animation. Sometimes it worked with only a few tweaks and sometimes it required re-writing.

When everyone was happy with the story, Espresso wrote the full script which then underwent some detailed refinements. Following this we made an animatic, a rough sketchy animation with music and guide narration to check timings and make sure that all the teaching points were coming across clearly before producing the final animation and adding sound effects.

The series has been very well received both by Espresso and by teachers. It was shortlisted for a BETT (British Educational Training and Technology) award. The full series is available through Discovery Education’s subscription service.