Hi folks!
I'm a composer who writes music and songs for Cartoon Network. I also make short films! Last year I wrote a post asking if my filmmaking/songwriting skills could be put to use somehow to help promote EA ideas or charities. I ended up collaborating with The Life You Can Save to create this puppet and animation based mini-musical! It aims to playfully discuss some ideas around effective giving in the global health and development arena, and to promote The Life You Can Save.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y3TTVK8wGQ
I wanted the video to express my own joy at having found a way to make a large positive impact in the world, and to lightheartedly address some concerns people might have around global charities. For transparency's sake: I self-funded the production costs of the video.
I'd love to know what you think! If you like it please consider sharing it to help it get seen by more people. I hope it might pique some curiosity about TLYCS and gain more donations for their recommended charities.
As I understand it the team at TLYCS plan to create a pack to use this video as a kicking off point for educating children about effective giving, so I'm interested to learn if it's useful in that area.
I also wrote a supporter story on their website with a bit more personal background, if you're interested.
If you have any questions, comments or critical feedback fire away! I'd like to learn from this foray and hopefully lend my creative skills to future projects (not necessarily puppet-based!) in the EA world if it seems like a worthwhile thing to do.
This was fun to watch, and I'm sure to produce. For the most part I really liked it!
There was one part that struck me as off-base, around 1:22, where it says "Where otherwise they'd likely die!". There were a few reasons I found these few seconds problematic:
1. I felt that it implied TLYCS charities help save the lives of people who will otherwise die... e.g. it made me picture life-saving surgeries for people in critical care units. While there are many TLYCS charities that I'm unfamiliar with, no typically recommended EA global development organizations that I'm aware of prevent likely death. Rather, those that do save lives, help prevent disease, and as far as I know in no case the percent likelihood of death of an individual anywhere near 50% or greater without the intervention.
2. It felt like it was making light of the issue at that point as well. I think it would have been easy to continue the playful tone with a sad face and a bit of quietness at that time, with a slow ramp up of the volume later. Instead, it just breezed past it in a way that felt upbeat to me. FWIW, I also think that what felt to me a bit like making light of death made the video less credible to me.
Other, more minor, feedback:
1. I think it would likely have been better if shorter, or otherwise somehow more dynamic to justify the length. While there were a lot of great parts, I found it a bit repetitive and lost interest a bit.
2. I imagine the majority of the audience is American, and therefore I imagine the video would be better received, on average, if the main actor had an American accent rather than one of another country. An alternative could be to have the lyrics incorporated into the video to help with listening comprehension.
3. At 1:54, I was surprised by some of the icons. I'm not sure if there's a drinking water charity TLYCS suggests or not, but that's a less typical intervention for EAs to endorse. I also thought the mosquito would look better with a red circle and line over it or something.
I'm curious if there's a deployment strategy? I see the number of views is relatively low (currently 1.5k).