Technology How-to Documentaries
From Akvo Labs
Technology How-to Documentaries is one of four categories of films in the Akvo video strategy.
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Description
These in-depth films attempt to communicate as much information as possible about how to implement a given watsan technology. In ideal scenarios these films would enable a person skilled in the art to implement projects successfully without further training, although this is to be understood as the exception rather than the rule. More frequently films would be used in conjunction with training courses by providing overview material, something to use as a refresher in the field, and so on. Films would likely be between thirty minutes and two hours, although there may be a special class of essentially unedited end-to-end project films which would record every step in near real time. These films may be considerably longer, although they are likely only of interest to skeptical engineers considering deploying the given technology themselves.
Who Produces?
These films will be shot by professional documentary film crews who have experience in this kind of technical work. It is extremely unlikely that fully useful films of this type can be made by amateur film makers, and quality and completeness are extremely important for this kind of permanent reference material. The goal is to produce films which are suitable for use on broadcast television.
Who Watches and How is the film Distributed?
These films are likely to be distributed using DVDs and keychain drives because they are primarily of interest to field partners who likely do not have strong bandwidth. However, internet distribution will be available as always.
Who Pays?
These films would be funded directly by groups financing water infrastructure deployments as a way of accelerating the global roll-out of the technology described in each film.
Who has Creative Control?
The entity funding the film would collaborate with the film-makers closely.
What’s the Goal?
Ideally, to enable people to become expert builders of a specific water technology without further training, as a way of implementing water projects globally. Realistically, these films would contribute a lot to awareness of solutions and training, but large scale direct implementation remains a possibility particularly for simpler technologies.
How Do We Measure Success?
Success is likely to come from viewing figures and, especially anecdotal evidence about specific projects which were completed using the videos in support of that project. It is unlikely we will be able to comprehensively track access to these films globally, or identify the global uptake of a given technology because of the extremely complex path between the information being made available and finished projects using that technology live in the field. Tracking viewer numbers for the films being used as part of a training activity should be considerably easier and might provide particularly valuable feedback (“2000 engineers in Brazil were trained using this film.”) The same is also true of broadcast television use of these films.
