SPOT THE ELEPHANT
Design Fiction
Final Project
Communication Design
Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon
2020
instagram: spothelephant
This is the final project in the Communication Design BA. It consisted of creating a fiction based on a movie.
SPOT THE ELEPHANT is an adaptation of the movie Elephant (2003) by Gus Van Sant. This movie portrays the massacre of Columbine High School in 1999. The word “Elephant” refers to an uncomfortable reality we ignore and avoid to discuss but that ends up with a possible fatal outcome.
Starting from the premise “What if we saw the Elephant in the Room?”, STE is a journey to dissect the origins and patterns that crossed the life of Alex, an american boy who decided to commit a massacre at his school. This is not only looking at the “monster” that was boiling under pressure and exploded, but also directing our focus to the root of the problem.
By dissecting the life of Alex and the events that preceded the massacre we realize the culture of violence in the United States of America is in the big layered Elephant. It is, after all, an exclusively north american phenomenon.
Trailer for the project
Communication Objects and Archive
To promote the fiction to the public inside and outside the faculty we developed a digital poster, sent to our contacts by email and an Instagram account @spothelephant where we released teasers before the website went online.
Apart from Alex's Journey, the website also contains an About section, an archive of the fiction with a four part Production Manual and approaches, which consists of four videos that expand the fiction to other topics related to it.
Digital Poster
Instagram page @spothelephant
This project was created remotely and is featured in the finalists exhibition of Communication Design 2020:
