The Citizen
Created for NCSL’s Trust for Representative Democracy, this upbeat 13-minute video blends live action and character animation for elementary and secondary school students. The video is used as a springboard to engage students in civics education, and is part of the Trust’s “America’s Legislators Back to School” program which promotes state-level legislators visiting classrooms and discussing representative democracy. Milkhaus worked with the Trust to create a week-long civics based lesson plan for students at The Challenge Foundation, a school located in Denver, CO. A handful of students from the school volunteered to travel with the film crew to Colorado’s State Capital building, and interview state legislators from both sides of the aisle. These students were also the voices to our animated superhero characters! In this exciting twist, we recorded a roundtable improv session where the students were charged with creating who they would be as a superhero. While in character, we asked the students about their roles as citizens and their voice in government. The idea was to show kids that you don’t have to have super-powers to make a difference in this world. From there, we created character designs based on the student’s descriptions, and animated the edited conversation.
