Animated documentary
Some true stories can't be filmed. The events happened before cameras, the witnesses need protection, or the material is too painful for literal depiction. Animation is how documentary tells these stories — from the NFB's pioneering animated documentaries to Waltz with Bashir and Flee. ELAION works in that tradition, from Vancouver.
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Testimony animation.
Animating first-person accounts — interviews, oral histories, survivor testimony — with visual language built around the speaker's memory. We do this for Project Witness on both the Microshort Stories series and the feature documentary We Dared to Write.
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Historical visualization.
Reconstructing events, places, and moments where no footage or photography exists, researched and built to documentary standard.
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Animated sequences for documentary productions.
We partner with directors and producers as the animation studio on funded documentaries — from a two-minute memory sequence to a fully animated film.
When animation is the right call
01.
NO FOOTAGE EXISTS
02.
THE WITNESS CANNOT APPEAR
The events predate film, or no one was there to record them.
Identity needs protecting, or the person who could have spoken is gone.
Animation can hold a scene at a distance without softening what happened in it.
THE MATERIAL IS TOO HARD TO SHOW LITERALLY
03.
04.
THE SUBJECT IS INTERIOR
Memory, fear, belief — things that were never visible to a camera in the first place.
If your project fits more than one of these, animation is usually not a stylistic choice. It's the only way the story gets told.
How we work
Technique follows the story. We work in 3D and 2D, and choose per project rather than fitting every subject to one house style. Production runs in-house from research through final delivery — our production runs in-house.
R E S E A R C H
We start from what you provide: script, historical record, source material. Then we research past it. The moment a story has to become an image, it asks questions the text never had to answer — what that street looked like in that year, what this person would have worn, what was actually in the room. Visual accuracy is research work, and we treat it that way.
D E S I G N
We develop the look of the piece: characters, environments, props, palette, and the visual language that carries the tone. These come to you as proposals. Nothing is locked before you've seen it.
A N I M A T E D S T O R Y B O A R D
Before full production begins, we build the entire piece as an animated storyboard — timed, with camera moves, pacing, and the shape of every scene. This is the most important approval point in the project, and the one we ask clients to spend real attention on. Everything is still cheap to change here: what's shown, what's withheld, where the camera stands, how long a moment is allowed to hold. After this stage, changes get slower and more expensive. Getting it right here is what keeps a project from running long.
P R O D U C T I O N
Lighting, colour, camera angle and movement, facial expression, motion, music, and sound design. Every one of these is a decision about how a moment reads to the person watching — sound and music included, which are written into the piece rather than added at the end.
R E V I E W T H R O U G H O U T
Progress is shared as it happens, not delivered as a reveal. On sensitive material especially, historical accuracy and tone get checked continuously, so nothing arrives as a surprise at the end.
P I P E L I N E
Blender, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, Illustrator — and hand-drawn work, from first sketches through 2D animation.
For producers & institutions
If you're developing a documentary that needs animation — for a sequence or the whole film — we scope, style-frame, and produce in-house in Vancouver. Scope, schedule, and review stages are agreed per project, against what the piece actually needs. We work with broadcasters, museums, memorial and educational organizations, foundations, and independent producers. ELAION is a Canadian-owned studio based in British Columbia.