Executive Education: Curiosity

Saatchi & Saatchi Animates Curious Times for UCT Graduate School of Business Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town has developed an animated short film to introduce Executive Education, a sub-brand of the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) by showing how curiosity grows with new discoveries and in return rewards one.

Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town, Sammy-Jane Thom says that Saatchi’s brief was to create a piece that would be used as a sales aid to introduce potential delegates, who are corporate executives, to the institution’s way of thinking and to be used as a stand alone in media that supports long format (more than 60” duration) like the Internet and Cinema.

Off the platform of curiosity, Executive Education seeks to promote agility of thought through the premise that questions change the world, not answers. It is with a curious mind that new worlds open.

Thom says that in keeping with this way of thinking, Saatchi & Saatchi wanted to break the mould on the traditional Audio Visuals. “We didn’t want something expected and familiar to this audience. We wanted to create something that would leave viewers thinking, contemplating and inspired to explore.

Our AV had to offer an alternative headspace to this audience, so that they would be receptive to the school’s offering. So we decided to go the route of animation, which allowed us to explore the world of metaphor.”

She adds, “Our objective was to get this type of thinking across in an emotive yet entertaining way, that took the viewer on a journey. We did this by showing an average 40-year old executive walking in a cityscape with a strange companion, a creature, which represents his curiosity. With each exploration his ‘curiosity creature’ evolves in size and colour, with more adventure and new worlds opening up to the two of them. The animation culminates in a magical end scene where the man is rewarded by his curiosity.”

Thom continues, “It was really important that we collaborated with suppliers that would help realise our objective.”

The animation by Conduit brought the story to life, paying exceptional attention to detail and colouring the film with a fresh hand-painted technique. The sound design by Soft light City truly captured the essence of “curiosity” – creating a balance between intrigue and warmth, with outstanding attention to sound effects for the alternative worlds.

“We are very proud of the end-product that took 4 months to achieve and believe that the animation awakens the desire that lies within each of us to explore, discover and try new things.”

The animation will be released at cinema’s on the 30th September.