AA: Nickelodeon Fat Files - Fast Food

One of the documentaries that we looked at for our projects was 'Nickelodeon Fat Files - Fast Food'. It was produced for children and shown in breaks between cartoons on Nickelodeon in 2002 to give children information about fast food and to promote healthy eating. In our animation, we want to aim it at the same age range, around 6-11, so I think that this is a good short to take influence from.

Despite the somewhat serious matter, it is still light hearted and entertaining, especially with the puns and food humor in it that I particularly enjoy. Humor can also help children learn stuff easier, since cold, hard facts aren't quite as interesting to children as jokes are. The style is reminiscent of Hanna-Barbera style animations, something that most people have probably seen at some point in their life, so this make it looks less like some boring, informative thing that you have to watch and makes the documentary feel much more consistent with the other animation on the channel - it is just another fun cartoon to watch that happens to be full of useful facts.

The narration is another thing that keeps it interesting; the very American announcer kind of voice fits in again with other cartoons, and stops the information from being dull. If the information was text based, children would not bother to read it, so using audio makes them much more likely to listen and absorb it. The voice also has a sense of fun (unlike a lot of the more information heavy videos you might hear at schools for this age group) and makes the whole animation feel even more lively.

These have been very effective ways of getting the message across; the show is fun, interesting, and isn't too in-your-face about giving you information. I feel like so far this is very relevant to our project, and will probably be influencing our work more than some of the other documentaries we have looked at. The style of narration is definitely something that we want to look at, and the humor  and aesthetic style gives us a few more things to think about when it comes to the script and look of the show.