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Animation on Web Foundation’s Mission: What do you think?

Web Foundation · June 27, 2011

http://vimeo.com/21407925

Please give us your impression of this 3 minute animation (text of script, animation on Vimeo, YouTube, .mp4 file), which aims to summarize the vision and efforts of the World Wide Web Foundation.  Forward the link to your friends and family, too, so we can get a good range of opinions.  To illustrate some of the challenges and solutions in reaching our vision, we refer to the work we are doing and planning to do in Africa to empower farmers through the Web – Web-alliance for Regreening in Africa (W4RA) (many, many thanks to our funder and partner, VU University, Amsterdam, and our other partners in W4RA, for their support in this particular initiative!).

Please comment on the animation by submitting comments through this blog post.  What message did you hear?  What are your thoughts and feelings about that message? Was the animation compelling?  What about the music and captioning?  What would YOU change to more effectively convey the barriers that block the Web from being a true value all people on the planet, as well as the efforts needed to remove these barriers?

Kudos to Craig Heintzman who oversaw the project, to CP+B for the pro-bono work on the concept and script, and Tendril Design+Animation.

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  1. Leonard Shen

    March 29, 2011

    Good 2D animation and graphics. Nicely done. However, I think this video can totally use some real footage or still photos to bring some real documentary aspect to it. The issues with the Sahara Desert seems vague without real numbers and pics/videos. I also think that the voice over does not necessarily need to have an accent. UV StudioThanks

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    1. Peter Yezukevich

      April 15, 2011

      Well paced, engaging visuals and energetic music. I like the narrator's tone. I agree that the desert example is not strong. It made me think 'Why is the desert growing?' and all that comes with that question (i.e., a number of issues which the point of the video does not need to be muddled by). I imagine there will be a series of videos, covering the different issues mentioned, based on this template. I'd like to see them, because surely there are clearer examples of how the Foundation can help.Thanks.

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      1. Tosh

        June 28, 2011

        I think its a brilliant Clip. Irregardless of whether its missing footage or not, it still drives the message home and inspires people to join the conversation. Great Job!

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        1. Steve Bratt

          June 28, 2011

          Thanks for the helpful comment, Tosh! We'll pull in more video with real people from our first projects. Please spread the word so that we can hear from as wide a variety of people as possible.I found this video from shortly after we launched. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKJ68tdIGQoHere is another video that Florence put together from our first Mobile Entrepreneur training course in Accra- http://tinyurl.com/3rrgk3yShe will do a bit more editing on it before we make a big announcement about it.

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        2. Wendy Levy

          June 28, 2011

          The video is full of good ideas. Infographic-style animation is data-rich and compelling, but ultimately one-note. The video needs a human face to create real urgency and pathos around the issue - clips from documentaries or news footage that tells the real story on the ground. There are some much stronger examples of work being done by global communities -- thanks to Ushahidi, MobileActive, Digital Democracy, Child Count, etc.

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          1. Steve Bratt

            June 28, 2011

            Thanks to you too, Wendy. I agree on all counts. Some responses to Tosh are relevant to your comments. Keep watching and spread the word!

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          2. stvhamill

            June 28, 2011

            It's a great start. It's a little long. You are both explaining the mission and then exemplifying it - the best approach, and one that would capture people's attention more quickly - would be to use an approachable example (like the desert one perhaps) that does the explaining for you. I also think you are "preaching to the choir" about the potential impact of the web, you could probably cut that down to a sentence or two about how the web has bettered lives and economies in the developing world but the developed world is missing out on the transformational benefits of this technology. But I liked the creative approach.

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            1. Steve Bratt

              June 28, 2011

              Great comments, stvhamill. We did make a shorter version .. http://vimeo.com/21397898 .. but this is probably the opposite of what you want, since it is the beginning of the full video. See my other responses re: use of real stories by real people in the future. We are certainly preaching to the choir with people who comments on this. It would be great if you would pass this link to friends and family who are not so knowledgeable about the Web and who is and is not using it in various ways. Thanks so much.

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            2. Martin Kliehm

              June 29, 2011

              The animation is really beautiful and original, however I find it more difficult to concentrate on the animation and the narrator with open captions. At least YouTube supports closed captions, so I'd suggest using that option on YouTube which would also enable crowdsourced translations. Also downloads in more open formats - like WebM - and higher resolutions would be nice.

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              1. Steve Bratt

                June 29, 2011

                Hi Martin. We'll shoot for close captioning in the future. We did include a separate file with the text (linked under the video in the post) in case people would be kind enough to translate it. I agree that the resolution cannot possibly be as good as is available. I've asked the animators if we can get at higher-res version. Thanks!

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              2. Claude Almansi

                June 30, 2011

                I was going to write the same thing as Martin about closed captioning - plus could you perhaps fade out the music? For non native speakers, it interferes with the text.Back to closed captioning: it can also be done socially e.g. at Universal Subtitles (), one of the projects of the Participatory Culture Foundation, which doesn't have a length limit, and whose principles are close to the Foundation's. You could even start a subtitling team of volunteers there. But even in a more informal manner, the collaboration there is really striking: I finished captioning in English Lawrence Lessig's "The Architecture of Access to Knowledge" (50 minutes) in on April 23 in the evening. Next morning I found the full Japanese subtitles; the others sets of subtitles followed within a few weeks.And it would work even better if it were you who announced that a video is ready for captioning / subtitling.

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                1. Jessica

                  September 13, 2011

                  Did not care for the music anyway but it did not see like it went with the narration.

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                  1. Johannes

                    February 9, 2012

                    Great video! Explains really well what the foundation is about and the grand scheme of things to do.A minor improvement would be to not end the video apruptly but have 8-10seconds of silence with the logo, the URL and a contact mail address shown. This would ensure that if the video is shown elsewhere that everybody who sees the video knows where to get further information.

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                    1. Steve Bratt

                      February 9, 2012

                      Johannes ... Glad you got something out of the animation. Thank you for the helpful comment, too. Yes, extending the ending at you said would be very effective. We'll note that for the next version! Steve

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                    2. Fawmy Siddeek

                      May 12, 2012

                      The expanding dessert example and how WWW can have a positive impact on the lives of those farmers and people needs to be a little bit more explained, frankly speaking I could't help asking my self, how the already impoverished and unfortunate farmers with such pressing conditions will ought to WWW for help, First this needs to be well explained...Good luck!!!

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