Blank on Blank is a project developed by PBS Digital Stories. The premise of this project is to pair real life interviews with famous people with animated visuals. The collaborators of this project include journalists, publishers, and documentarians who publish never-before-heard audio archives. When I first watched a clip on our Canvas page, I was immediately struck by the audio of two individuals in my generation who were important musically but are now deceased – Kurt Cobain and 2Pac. I thought the animations of them, paired with their audio pieces were well done.

I went to the Blank on Blank website and explored. The content is placed into episodes, with one famous person devoted to each episode. I noted that the content creators seem to focus on people who have recently passed away, such as George Michael, Leonard Cohen, and David Bowie.

I thought this was particularly useful as a learning tool, to bring awareness to artists that the younger generations may not be too familiar with. Pairing their audio interviews with the animations is another way to bring this sort of content to young people as a learning tool, as they may feel more engaged with it. I also noticed that the animations seem to be getting better and better with each episode. Some animations, such as the ones done for the Stephen King and Alfred Hitchcock episodes, are simply awesome.

I feel that Blank on Blank is a unique medium that captures the essence of who these famous people are and were. By pairing the audio with an animated visual, it moves it from being simply an audio file to something more easily digestible. Many people have difficulty with processing audio-only information,so the benefit of the visual animations brings it to a place where people can easily digest the content.