Akvo video strategy
From Akvo Labs
To succeed fully, Akvo must involve tens of thousands to tens of millions of people in its process. Video is central to achieving that goal.
At the software level, Akvo could be understood as a structured mass communication platform, enabling international cooperation between different groups to execute business processes. However, the format of those communications - short messages to limited distribution groups - is closer to the “facebook / twitter” end of the spectrum than to email. Part of what goes along with that, and the multilingual nature of the groups communicating, is a likely increased reliance on photography and film-making to enrich the communication stream. Enhanced understanding through selective use of richer media is likely to lead to increased participation in the process.
Contents |
Background
This document combines two separate streams of thought: how Akvo can work with video at a strategic level, and the practical framework for producing films. Detailed technical content will appear in appendices, as will template proposals for various kinds of film projects. It is expected that we will tear these two levels apart later, but right now – until we have a clear “house practice” on video with a few dozen films behind it – it seems important that everybody producing film has a shared understanding of how and why we make films the way we make them.
Planning, shooting, editing and distributing films has to be done with one eye on the strategic goals. Every film is global communication, and we can never guess what the internet will publicize. In particular, it's important to build in-house understanding of media as a global process in this context – that we are not making films primarily for consumption in our own culture, but as part of a long-term approach to global goals and a global audience. Anything we do could be seen by a head of state, or by a local villager. It can be casual, but it must not be wrong!
Akvo's video strategy is a success if it accomplishes three things:
- It is at least financially self-sustaining, and preferably generates revenue and support for further research and development into communications processes.
- It directly and measurably furthers the core objectives of Akvo as defined by metrics like completed projects that video helped to fund.
- It supports the wider goals of Akvo's communications strategy, including generating broad-based public awareness and engagement in Akvo's activities, and cross-over with mainstream media.
Our Film Audiences
The Villagers* Themselves
For people to see themselves and their projects as media-worthy - to be encouraged to tell their stories to a global audience - is a powerful act in its own right. Horizontal viewing - villagers looking at water project films made by villages just down the river is one component. Collaborative media production does not mean distributing movies to the west! There are a lot of different directions to this exchange.
The villagers are unlikely to be translating much of their footage, resulting in exclusive, local video ecologies. A little might be translated by third parties, some films might be shot by field partners who have English skills, but we expect the bulk of camphone-video will be people talking about their water projects in their native language with the intended audience of their countrymen, neighbors and friends. Automated metadata context becomes increasingly important for identifying and managing these films in the long run, so that we can find and use footage shot for one purpose for other purposes. A parallel would be trawling Youtube to find films which mention a product, and using those clips to assemble reviews. Part of the long-term function of Akvo's video effort is to enable discovery of films in the local language referring to specific technologies or partners. We can expect to be managing and distributing films we have scant contact with.
- the ANSI-standard NGO term for these people is “beneficiaries,” a term that I regard with the same fondness as “consumers.”
Groups in the Business Process
Conducting normal business processes with a video component is part of Akvo's business culture. Conferencing happens all the time. It is likely that we will export this by example. The difference between and email-and-brochure world and an iChat-and-Youtube world is very real and important. Where possible we use the whole signal.
Rendering the real stories of the process visible to everybody involved (funders, partner groups, Akvo internally, other NGOs, governments) needs video. This is bidirectional communication: taking films of the Akvo team to the villages we deal with on keychain drives or DVDs, and showing them the faces and offices of the people on the other end of the wire may be invaluable in building a sense of this as a collaborative, conversational enterprise. It is not just that we watch their reports – they watch ours!
These films are “trade journalism” if they are general audience, or technical artifacts of communication if they are reporting videos. Production might be extremely simple because the core is about making the human beings involved in doing the work visible as human beings, rather than roles and job descriptions. The important distinction between the films for this audience and other audiences is that we are doing business by video. That is not particular common, might take some explaining, but is very powerful.
The general Internet public
The people of the internet want to help. They also like shiny things. The Evolution of Dance got something like 110 million views and had a production cost of approximately nothing – it is one person dancing in front of an audience to a series of songs. While we cannot expect or make sure that Akvo ever has a hit like that, what we are doing is inherently interesting and we must remember that this potential is always there.
We need to be aware that 15 million middle class Indians or Brazilians watching our videos probably has more impact on our long term goals than a similar number of western viewers. This has implications for translation of our texts around films, for dubbing and subtitling, and several other areas of the production and distribution pipeline. This is a slightly different issue from translation issues for villagers because the middle-class internet audience has significantly different expectations based on longer media exposure. “Explaining Akvo to the Brazilian middle class” brings lot of challenges and has lots of potential.
In the years to come it's certain that the villagers and general internet public will meet and fuse in a way which will leave a lot of people wondering what happened. Long term, we have to contextualize our work as being viewed directly to the villagers who are our customer's customers now, and perhaps will be our direct customers later. Today the shape of this transition is unclear – will it be a mass adoption of western media mores, or a washing out of the taste and style of the relatively few westerners in the influx of other cultures arriving en masse on the internet?
They may seem abstract today but the Akvo postcards, with their loud cries of Mission Rope Pump and The Woman Who Built Herself a Toilet speak directly to this transition in future years. It is important to focus early on building diversity inside the Akvo network to make sure that we are not committing faux pas and wiring in misunderstandings in the seed culture. One approach to this is outsourcing some services to those areas specifically to bring diversity into the workflow – more on this later.
Whatever facet of the global culture we are communicating with, the basic rules of video for this audience are fairly clear: short videos, not over-produced but demonstrating expertise, well publicized in blogs, with upbeat tone, and not asking people to think too hard. Videos with those properties are the ones most likely to spread virally to mass audiences, as each person who found it good passes it to their friends.
Mainstream Media
There is an inherent tension between the extremely and radically “horizontal” Akvo model and the us-them messaging which comes around in every single media story on the developing world. Another angle on this was provided by an economist in The Hague, who said “200 years ago, the term New World meant exactly what Developing World means today”
Akvo has an implicit understanding of this reality – that the developing world is a radical, fast-moving place with nearly unlimited possibilities. We understand that we largely exist to facilitate these people getting organized to get what they want and need out of life. While the immediate business model is to support NGOs that are helping these people, we all share an implicit understanding about who our fundamental customers are.
This presents a very clear “off-message” problem when dealing with mainstream media, who have only the vaguest notions of human life in the poorer areas of the world. The emotional language of the mainstream media message about the developing world is filled with the kinds of things we point scorn at in our private conversations: sad children looking into muddy holes and helpless natives waiting for help. This probably implies that there will always be problems moving the “standard” Akvo content into mainstream media through channels like television news, documentaries and “big push” aid extravaganzas because it is profoundly “off message.” The picture we paint – The Woman Who Built Herself a Toilet – breaks the frame. Even positive stories about the developing world carry deeply-ingrained assumptions about western cultural superiority. We need to build and maintain an awareness of these kinds of issues in our communications, not just in terms of what we put out, but in terms of the biases of the organizations we hope will amplify awareness of our activities or carry our messages.
There are also technical issues about shooting footage that might wind up being used by mainstream media: it needs to be better quality than our typical camera equipment supports unless it is going to be used for very, very short clips. We also need to pay close attention to licensing issues and have an awareness of what footage we want to be free for mainstream media use, and what we wish to restrict to (say) non-commercial use to keep it off the TV.
The role of technology, and avoiding Technophilia
Film-making is a creative process. The video strategy exists to harness the creativity of the Akvo community through the new activity of film-making to further the goals of Akvo as a whole.
The video strategy is not a technology strategy, but a communications strategy. It is critical that we do not define making films as a technical activity, although our technical execution is a major focus. Success at a technical level is a necessary prerequisite to succeeding at a communications level.
The medium of film is technically demanding but we must be clear that creative vision is at the heart of the Akvo video communications strategy: we want film-makers to speak, on our behalf at times, but always with their own voices. The technical platform exists to enable storytelling.
The key enabling technology for Akvo's involvement in film is cheap video cameras, cheap video distribution, and moderately priced video editing. The technology is in flux and as the price/performance ratios and available distribution channels continue to evolve. It is important to stay off the bleeding edge, attempting to always operate in known-good “sweet spots.”
It is also important match the production system used for each film to the expectations for the film. One cannot make broadcast-quality films by buying expensive cameras and handing them to inexperienced crews. Similarly, very little web video requires a $1000 per minute budget. A film as effective as a big budget production might often be produced for $200 – or $20.
The challenge is to evaluate continuously and dynamically the price-performance ratio of the different film-making and distribution formats available to us. It is not a uniform space, it is a series of best-guesses about fitting the mode of production to the desired effect.
Mapping films to the Akvo Process
Akvo's core funding cycle works as follows:
- The general public gives money to funding partners, including donations, taxation and other mechanisms.
- Funding partners, support partners and field partners make deals using Akvo Direct.
- Funding partners transfer funds to support and field partners to carry out the project.
- Field partners carry out the project.
- Reports are sent to the support and funding partner using Akvo Really Simple Reporting.
- All parties can use Akvopedia to communicate about the watsan technologies being implemented at any point in this process.
The four kinds of films we are most interested in fit directly into this process model.
The four kinds of films we produce
Akvo films cover either the application of specific appropriate technologies in the field, or support funding or reporting on projects. Our films fit into four categories:
- Technology Shorts
- Technology How-to Documentaries
- Project Funding Films - Request to Funding Partner
- Project Funding Films - Request to General Public
