Besides the prestigious honor (the nationwide contest receives hundreds of entries from top-tier institutions) Ellis and Collins received a cash prize of $1,000, an amount they said they will “split down the middle” and use to help fund their upcoming study-abroad trip to London in June.
“We looked at several videos that had been done by entrants in the past,” Collins said, explaining the 30-second video's construction, “and what we found is that unless you're a professional, good cinematography is hard. So Joey and I decided to stick to what we were good at and do the entire piece based on graphics and typography.”
The animated short, Collins and Ellis said, stretches the metaphor of a human body getting compromised by a virus and extends it to the world of computers. It follows a course from plug-in through use, and tells a cautionary tale.
“It's almost like you have a microscope and are going inside a computer to see its inner-workings,” Ellis said. “We're not actors, and we wanted to make something that we were good at, so we follow an animated course of connection through the computer, talk about protecting it, and then go back through the course. We knew our audience would be college-age viewers, and we thought the theme would be interesting to them.”
Collins and Ellis used the programs Flash, Photoshop and Final Cut to put all pieces of the project together, and said they split the work almost exactly, with Collins doing the illustration, Ellis writing the script, Collins writing the music and Ellis doing the animation and synchronizing the illustrations and music.
The mad rush to meet the deadline was a joint effort, as well, with the final handing off to FedEx after a three-day stretch of all-nighters.
“I remember making the deadline at the last minute,” Collins said. “Then, for the longest time, we didn't think [EDUCAUSE] had received it and were going to call. Then, last week, we got the e-mail saying we'd won. It was really bizarre.”
To view a streaming version of the video, go to [www.researchchannel.org/securityvideo2007] and click on the “Avoid Infection” link.
Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photo by Kathy Atkinson