Extended Practice Research: Dumb Ways to Die

'Dumb Ways to Die' is a brand created by Advertising Australian Agency, 'McCann Melbourne' in 2012. It started off as a simple public service campaign for Metro Trains in Australia, to highlight the hazards, dangers and ways to be safe when using trains. What once started off as a simple video with catchy music and a little narrative where characters die in humorous but 'dumb' ways, 'Dumb Ways to Die' has become a huge brand that is well established all over the world.

McCann Melbourne have taken one simple video and turned it into something much bigger. Using social media platforms, the agency plastered the slogan everywhere, and even took the opportunity to turn it into a game in the App store. Not only does this spread the message even further to new audiences and backgrounds, but it gets people involved in the theme of train safety which is beneficial all round.

This is the original video which I remember coming across when I was in Sixth Form. I watched the whole thing and then was very surprised to find that it was for train safety, and I remember all of my friends thinking the same thing! However I think that this is quite clever because perhaps if you knew what it was for in the beginning, you wouldn't watch it all the way through as it is not a very exciting topic.

Besides the song being extremely catchy, the animation itself is simple but so well done. There isn't really any composition for each scene as there are rarely any backgrounds but the animation that does happen is so fluid and smooth. The actions look realistic and effortless which is something that I want to try and improve in my own work as well as carefully considering composition.

I really enjoyed the colours in this animation too as they are vivid but not too loud. They all go together nicely, but will use a key colours (for example red for blood) to make their actions stand out. I know that I often go a bit too much with colour, so it is nice to see how you can use them to emphasis and balance out certain elements in a scene.

Now you can even buy the characters from the animations, or stationary and homeware with the message and characters across each item. McCann Melbourne have really thought of everything to broaden their franchise which is great as it is still very popular nearly five years later!

I want to take a lot of influence from this pubic service announcement because it is an example of advertising done right. I hope to think of colour in the same way they have done, to emphasise and enhance, instead of just to simple be there. I want to make my animations smoother so you can focus on the action and hopefully, I can make a series of my own animations on sub topics so that they can become their own small brand in themselves!