That's The Thing About Love — Jasmine Stevens

That’s The Thing
About Love

In my motion graphics capstone course during my graduate career, we were required to create a 30-second promo sequence for a fictional television series about anything of our choosing. Having been inspired by both poignant and powerful moments in 2019, I created a promo for a docuseries centered around moments that had significant cultural and social impact on the world.

Stumped upon how I would make the whole project come together visually, one of my favorite songs “The Thing About Love” by Alicia Keys kept circling around in my head, and from there this short promo was born.

Rationale —

For this project, I was inspired by the song “The Thing About Love” by Alicia Keys and to me personally, I felt there were a lot of powerful, poignant moments in 2018 and 2019, the year I created this, that truly embodied what this song means to me.

Centered around the song’s lyrics, I wanted to produce a simplistic promo for a potential docuseries that would air on NBC and reflect on moments within 2019 that give meaning to the song’s title. The moments featured in the promo were “the thing about love” and what that looks like when given a spotlight.

These moments included Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony against Brett Kavanaugh; survivors of Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse and sexual abuse in general, such as Aly Raisman; the historic number and class of women inducted to the U.S. House of Representatives which included Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the youngest congresswomen ever elected; American activist and Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez; the emotional moment between tennis athletes Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams during the U.S. Open, and Oprah’s powerful speech for the “Me Too” movement upon accepting the Cecil B. de Mille Award at the 2018 Golden Globes.

All of these moments together personified the words: courage, solidarity, empowerment, bravery, strength, and determination respectively. I wanted to make a statement in this piece without putting too many elements in the mix.

Hopefully I was able to create a moving piece that portrayed how all of those characteristics embody the thing about love that ties all of these amazing women together.