Intern: Camilla di Nardo
In the last ten weeks, I’ve been working on the storyboards for the Consent Lab, CUE’s laboratory on intimacy, communication and consent. During this 6-hour learning experience, divided into shorter animated videos, students will have the opportunity to discover more about themselves and how to be safe and aware in their sexual life.
I was very enthusiastic to be invited to visualise the previously developed scripts and develop the storyboard. This task was an opportunity for me to use my creativity and passion for writing to develop an impactful project. Ten weeks later, I’ve gained new insights and skills on inclusive narratives.
My main task was to develop the animated components for the course, specifying how I wanted them to appear and move in the scene, so that my storyboards could later be developed into actual videos. I soon realised that it wasn’t just a matter of deciding how an image appeared on the screen: I had to reflect on what meanings I wanted to convey.
IMAGE: A PowerPoint page of Camila’s report presentation near the end of her internship
There were some visual rules that I had to keep in mind, mainly concerning distancing, size, colour, and many other aspects. I learned that the number of images in a scene, the blank spaces between them, the difference in size, their shades, and how they enter, exit and move are all as important as what the actual image represents. Following some visual learning rules, I understood that people can be engaged through patterns, conceptual relationships and underlying meanings of visual components (Alabi 2024).
Moreover, I was invited to pay attention to how much text I would use in the video. Inserting written content in a scene is a good way to identify what is important to remember, but at the same time, overloading learners with text can be tricky and obtain the opposite effect.
Inevitably, every stylistic choice I made had both perks and disadvantages. The task required a lot of self-reflection, doubting and critical thinking. The fact that I was dealing with animated components made this process easier, as I felt like animation allowed me to have the right amount of creative freedom and space to implement all these reflections.
IMAGE: A PowerPoint page of Camila’s report presentation near the end of her internship
The main advantage of animation was the possibility of using abstraction. The Consent Lab centers around topics that may be sensitive or even triggering for some: we are dealing with taboos, conversations that are often deemed “embarrassing”, and, in certain cases, dangerous and painful scenarios. Using metaphors and abstractions to represent such topics can be a way to create a safe distance between learners and the content, while maintaining a degree of connection that enables people to still engage with the material.
IMAGE: A PowerPoint page of Camila’s report presentation near the end of her internship
To have a clearer idea of how this process of abstraction works, here’s an example of a challenge that I encountered. In one storyboard, I had to visualise a scene in which one of the characters freezes during a sexual assault. Of course, the Consent Lab doesn’t depict violence, but still refers to it, as prevention is one of its main goals. I didn’t want to overlook the scene, as I felt it was very important to have it, but at the same time, I felt like I needed to be careful in representing it.
What I did was reflect on a strong metaphor that could encompass the meaning of the scene. I decided to have the main character look at the scene from outside, as they were watching a movie. When the freezing happened, the screen froze too, like there wasn’t any signal anymore. I made this choice thinking about what could happen when your body freezes, not being able to be in charge of it anymore.
It was in this challenging moment, which required a lot of thought, work and retouching, that I really reflected on the aim of a project like the Consent Lab. To me, it all came back to creating something that could resonate with people coming from many different backgrounds and empower them.
IMAGE: A PowerPoint page of Camila’s report presentation near the end of her internship
This task resulted in a never-ending reflection on inclusive storytelling. It was obviously demanding, but also very rewarding, like a complicated puzzle that needs a certain amount of commitment to be solved. The freezing scene is a clear example of how much behind-the-scenes work inclusivity requires.
What I also wanted to avoid was perceiving sensitivity and diversity as homework that I was forced to complete. My main goal was to go beyond the standard idea of inclusivity, which risks representing marginalized people as caricatures, whose only characteristic is their oppression: I wanted LGBTQ+ couples that were not solely challenging social norms, but also walking hand by hand; disabled individuals that were not only struggling, but also studying, seeing friends, or dating; plus sized people that were not either facing or standing out against bullism, but also have a life beyond that. Shedding light on oppression is important, but representing diverse characters with many layers of values, qualities and faults is equally fundamental.
What I’ve learned from this task is that storytelling is a job that requires a lot of patience and awareness: I had to be very conscious of my positionality and the possible biases that I could have. The key for me was avoiding feeling ashamed by my limits and working to gain as many perspectives as possible. The most rewarding moments of these ten weeks working on the Consent Lab were those in which I exchanged ideas, visions and opinions with the people around me.
References
IMAGE: A PowerPoint page of Camila’s report presentation near the end of her internship
