Telling Emma's Story
Emma Allen:
“…professional, friendly and very helpful. The illustrations he produced for our project perfectly reflected my words.”
Towards the end of 2020, Prof. Paul Clarke, Emma Allen, Sheila Atuona and Dr. Paul Cawley published this research paper. It documents the importance of facilitating a delivery room cuddle between a mother and her extremely premature baby. The significance of creating such a bond - especially when the baby might not survive beyond the first few days - is striking.
Prof. Paul Clarke got in touch with me with the idea of producing some simple images that might bring the report to a wider audience. He took me through the research paper which included this remarkable personal testimony from the mother of two of his tiny patients, almost 15 years earlier.
The story was so powerful… Emma had tragically lost one of her premature twins, but not before she was enabled to connect with him in the delivery room.
In my view, this was the best bridge for the wider public to access the team’s findings. I got to work breaking the story into chunks and creating some images that would communicate the key moments.
These were my early sketchbook scribblings where I knew that Emma’s story had to be the public bridge into the research report.
I am wary of misreading things (it’s a long story: too many mistakes in the past), so I was put in touch with Emma and walked her through my first draft just to get a feel for what was and wasn’t working - this was her story and it was important that she felt confident that I was reflecting it faithfully.
One of the benefits of living through this ‘pandemic-zoom’ age is that it is relatively simple to set up a video call where I took her through the first draft rough panels. (My advice to any illustrator out there is to get live feedback on your work from the client early on) this session was hugely valuable for guiding my thinking. It was clear that there were some really strong ideas in this piece, but it still needed honing.
This is a snapshot from my zoom session with Emma (hilariously it looks like I am talking to myself but she was very much present!) giving vital feedback on my initial grasp of the story.
From here I made some further edits to the text and created this final sequence of images in PDF form.
The feedback I got from Dr. Paul Cawley left me a little dizzy to be honest. I had to sit down for a few minutes. Surely this is what illustration should be about?
Simple animation
At this stage Prof. Clarke decided that the project would work better as a simple animation and encouraged me to develop it further along these lines. As you can see from the final piece, I decided against animating the drawings. Partly because of budget, mainly because of time: I focussed on trying to tell the story in the most cost-effective way possible.
What would communicate most directly with the audience? What was the one thing that could transcend our limitations? It was Emma telling her story, with her own voice.
I gave Emma some remote recording instructions and she sent me a couple of superb recordings (such a pro!) which I then worked into the edit. After some initial music choices of my own, Prof. Clarke and his colleagues gave me some considered feedback and the final piece emerged soon after.
My joy for this project lies in the fact that it is such a valuable cause. I hope that it will lead people to consider making this practice the default rather than the exception. Emma’s bond with Jack will clearly be treasured for the rest of her life.
As I finish this write-up it is well worth saying that my other delight here is the collaborative nature of my time working with Prof. Paul Clarke. In any creative endeavour the balance can be spoilt by either side pushing too much (or not enough). I love that we worked together on this and the end result is the better for it.
Paul wrote a very kind comment for me to share:
“This project was vital to promote wider dissemination of our neonatal unit’s research and practice. On accepting this commission, Jason undertook the careful prior legwork necessary to understand the detailed subject matter. Long before putting pen to paper, he had thereby been able to immerse himself in what was in many ways a complex and tragic real-life personal story yet one with a powerful positive message of hope and inspiration. His unique artwork consequently captures the very essence of Emma’s story perfectly and complements both her narration and the accompanying emotional-but-positive backing composition. His resulting final creation, achieved with the close collaborative input of all the research coauthors, is a beautiful, powerful and - we hope - inspiring piece that will help this project and Emma’s message reach a much wider audience for the benefit of many future very preterm babies and their families. The end result is exactly what we wanted.”
For any nerds who might get upset - here are the tools I used:
Sketchbook (of course!)
Clip Studio Paint on iPad and Mac
Affinity Publisher - this has become a really useful tool lately for all sorts of projects
Keynote
Final Cut Pro
More Than Robots Sketch-notes
Jason doesn’t just deliver an illustration. He absorbs the complex ideas and helps you explore them in a very human way.
Cliff Manning
I had the pleasure of being able to hook up as resident scribe/sketchnoter with Cliff Manning and his superb More Than Robots meet-up last week for the second time.
The terrific thing for me about this gathering is that it combines some personally significant strands. In Cliff’s own words:
Inspiration, evidence and ideas around digital engagement and participation. Irregular updates and quarterly meet ups for anyone interested in the tech/youth/support venn.
Here are the finished panels:
Some process notes
There is a weird time-related tension with scribing - trying to find the important ideas and portraying them without overdoing it. It’s a fleeting moment where you have to strike before the opportunity has gone. My preference is to combine some preparation with a live element.
Below are three snapshots from my work on one of the panels:
Roughs in my sketchbook while the presentation is happening
Some pencils as I process and refine things
Final tidy inks where I pull it all together
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The St Wilfrids School Film
Back in October 2020 I was given the opportunity to make a short film for one of the local primary schools.
Here is the delightful result:
For me the best filmmaking experiences are when there is a degree of spontaneity and playful engagement. I had such a laugh interacting with the kids on this day and I think this comes across pretty clearly. It is a common misconception to think of a film as a set of pre-planned powerpoint slides that you move through. The planning and organisation are crucial, but they are mainly setting the context for the emotional magic to happen.
I think it was either WiIliam Wilder or Sydney Lumet who said that there is a knack to telling an actor to relax in front of the camera without actually telling them to relax. Related to this are the famous jumping photographs of Philippe Halsman:
Starting in the early 1950s I asked every famous or important person I photographed to jump for me. I was motivated by a genuine curiosity. After all, life has taught us to control and disguise our facial expressions, but it has not taught us to control our jumps. I wanted to see famous people reveal in a jump their ambition or their lack of it, their self-importance or their insecurity, and many other traits.
What Halsman instinctively knew was how to disarm his subjects and draw something fresh from seemingly predictable wells. This is something that I have reflected on (and tried to practice) many times over the years.
Jason came to film our school for the day, he had a huge amount of energy and worked tirelessly to ensure he captured everything amazing about our school! We were thrilled with the final version and so proud of what has been achieved to showcase our children. Jason was fabulous, he listened to our vision and created an exceptional piece of film which reflects the ethos of our school! Thank you so much for going the extra mile and for putting in all the hours of hard work.
Sharon Reynolds - Headteacher, St Wilfrids Angmering
The St. Oscar Romero Promotional Video 2020
Having just spent the last three weeks creating a promotional film for my school I thought it was worth taking a moment to reflect on the design process.
Some background
I joined St. Oscar Romero Catholic School in January 2018, a term after Pete Byrne had arrived as the new headteacher (it was previously known as Chatsmore). I was the first teacher he recruited.
In the nearly three years I have been working at the school it has been dizzying¹ seeing just how much has changed. Ofsted landed very favourably for us in the first year; then we achieved an ‘all-category-outstanding’ section 48 inspection by the Diocesan inspection team the year after. Results have since risen dramatically, lifting the school into the top 20% nationally.
What used to be viewed as a ’nice but harmless’ small school in Goring is now an organisation with real teeth on the national stage. The Lost Box passion project² coordinated by my physics-teaching pal Pete Clarke is a symbol of the culture change within the school. The two sides of the timetable have been renamed Oxford/Cambridge with the first heads of school under Pete Byrne currently applying for Oxbridge after successfully winning scholarships to Brighton College and Christ’s Hospital to study their A levels.
In 2018 I created this promo video which provides an insight into where the school was at:
A sweet collaborative spot
Pete Byrne approached me just as lock-down hit earlier in the year with the idea of recreating this first video. In the end we ended up with something shorter and sweeter:
I am particularly pleased with this end product because it hit a collaborative sweet-spot. Some notes:
Instead of playing it safe and repopulating the original video with updated uniform shots we were adventurous and took a more organic approach with the material. I worked hard at trying to explore what was in front of me - playing with how it might be seen. In the end this material took it’s own shape in the edit that a cast-iron approach would never have allowed for.
I combined four very different camera systems - an Insta360 One X, an iPhone Pro Max, a Canon 4k with 20x optical zoom and a DJI drone (ta Second Unit Director Dougie Hauser). Having a sense of where the respective strengths lay was important - I spent a day wandering round using the 360 camera testing it out and was delighted to bring it into the tool box.
Being an insider has massive advantages. One of the problems with corporate video production is that the end result is often hollow, even dead inside as the prompted marionettes parade their obedient moves. That famous saying: ‘the best camera is the one with you’ could easily be exchanged for: ‘the best cameraperson is the one who is known by the subjects’. If the people in front of the camera aren’t at ease it all becomes a bit artificial and cosmetic. This video has soul - those aren’t fake smiles. Real people are really engaging.
The process was a journey of discovery for us all. It’s interesting to hear Pete Byrne speak about how this production clarified his own thinking about the school - not something to take lightly! Drafting, forming and refining this brand statement was exciting because we ended up discovering a diamond at the end.
Rebranding: a new skin or identifying the emerging, underlying character?
The last point raises an important question when it comes to rebranding any organisation: much of the time it becomes an inevitably cynical (and expensive) exercise in logo/font/graphic design. The thinking goes like this: if we look better we will become better - thus inspiring inner change and providing value for the target audience. You can probably tell that I don’t like this approach - I think it lacks integrity. I believe that the best thing you can do with a rebrand is to identify and polish the best of what is already there.
As I said above - in this instance we discovered a diamond - a school identity that had substantially moved on (Infinite Possibilities - imagine what is possible) to something more concrete (Every Door Open - lets get on with walking through and grasping those opportunities).
Last words: I loved making this video because I got to hang out with really fun people and enjoy collaborating on some awesome images. Having said that, the biggest pleasure was what we discovered about the underlying character of the school.
¹It is no understatement to say that being a secondary school teacher is extremely demanding - every day feels like you are working in a 24/7 Formula 1 pitstop crew. The experience of solitude and quiet reflection are largely banished to holidays and occasional weekends so be warned if you are thinking of following this career: it is simultaneously amazing and crushing.
² Winners of the highly respected Big Bang competition this summer and now shortlisted for the TES awards this November.