I. The PAPER BOAT
Our PSA ‘The Iceberg’ starts with a young girl walking with a paper boat in her hand. We compose her in a low angle, looking up at her to see a blue sky and warm glow of a late afternoon sun illuminating trees and foliage in the background. We follow the child to a lake.
She steps into ankle deep water and sets the paper boat down. With her hand she coaxes it to move forward by pushing water behind it. Our camera follows the boat and as it keeps drifting into the water, the background changes from the warm setting sun to a darker blue/purple sky depicting an arctic sunset. - emphasizing the warmth, safety and job of a child's world turning into something foreboding ahead.
II. The ICEBERG
Our camera pans and finds a floating iceberg. Its luminescent mass is beautifully lit by the raking light of the sun, low on the horizon. Here our narration starts. The camera drifts closer to the iceberg and dips under the water line.
Camera continues to sink in the water to show the submerged iceberg, deeper and deeper, as the narration continues. As the camera keeps sinking, the shafts of caustic light from the water surface starts to diminish until we find ourselves in dark depths of the ocean with contour of the iceberg barely visible. Our intention is to show that COVID is just the tip of the Iceberg. What comes ahead is mysterious, deep, dark and cold... ME. Here the narration ends and supers are laid on the video.
III. The TRANSITION
Creatively speaking, we accomplish the transition from a warm golden sunset to the Arctic environment via matte paintings and CGI extensions of the water in a stylized way. The child’s action will be captured in slow motion as she lays the boat gently on the water.
The background will be of an idyllic landscape lit by a late afternoon sun. We will pan left from the paper boat and see floating icebergs come into view in a very different setting and light. The dominance of cool colors begin here.
​
IV. The DEPTH
As we close in on an iceberg, we stop panning and let the camera dip below the water surface and dive following the contour of the iceberg to show the grandiosity of its size and depth that is not visible from the surface. We will depict the depth of the dive by diminishing the effect of light rays penetrating the water until it is just dark with the iceberg barely visible.
Sound effects and music throughout the piece to emphasize the mood and feeling in each scenario. From an airy summer day that matches a child’s joy and innocence to a cold foreboding dark, unknown world of the deep ocean, ending with the sound of a whale song/cry.
​
THE END