I think there’s a lot of unappreciated potential for short form online video as EA outreach. Most people who are interested in film don’t get into it thinking they want to make a large amount of 2 or 3 minute blurbs online, and yet many of those get the same amount of views as the most popular documentaries do. For example there’s no simple video with graphics that explains EA in 3-4 minutes. This seems to be a mistake to me, as there’s an entire audience of people that don’t want to read 10 pages about EA, and don’t want to watch a keynote, but would be interested in a 3-4 minute video, and potentially from there would follow up with the keynote or more reading. There’s no popular charity that doesn’t have at least one of these videos (see: the life you can save’s simple video) for this very reason.
So I still see documentaries as very important, as they’re an official and respected way to get a message out. It means a lot more to say that a film about EA was awarded x award at x festival than to say that a video got a million views, and it would get more press and generate more quality discussion, but I don’t think we should underestimate short form video as we have simply for its ease in comparison and tractability. I would rather we got one really solid general EA documentary out there and then focused on short form video. As for specific cause areas I agree that animal advocacy is pretty saturated with EA aligned films, though global poverty less so and x risk not much if at all. So films there could either be the global poverty film that advocates for people not to buy fair trade, for example, or anything tactfully done on ex risk.
Bit late to the party but here’s the EA film facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/644249799063219/
I think there’s a lot of unappreciated potential for short form online video as EA outreach. Most people who are interested in film don’t get into it thinking they want to make a large amount of 2 or 3 minute blurbs online, and yet many of those get the same amount of views as the most popular documentaries do. For example there’s no simple video with graphics that explains EA in 3-4 minutes. This seems to be a mistake to me, as there’s an entire audience of people that don’t want to read 10 pages about EA, and don’t want to watch a keynote, but would be interested in a 3-4 minute video, and potentially from there would follow up with the keynote or more reading. There’s no popular charity that doesn’t have at least one of these videos (see: the life you can save’s simple video) for this very reason.
So I still see documentaries as very important, as they’re an official and respected way to get a message out. It means a lot more to say that a film about EA was awarded x award at x festival than to say that a video got a million views, and it would get more press and generate more quality discussion, but I don’t think we should underestimate short form video as we have simply for its ease in comparison and tractability. I would rather we got one really solid general EA documentary out there and then focused on short form video. As for specific cause areas I agree that animal advocacy is pretty saturated with EA aligned films, though global poverty less so and x risk not much if at all. So films there could either be the global poverty film that advocates for people not to buy fair trade, for example, or anything tactfully done on ex risk.