Check out this open science hardware animated video we are working on!

General
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Hi all!

A few of us from GOSH & AfricaOSH are working on an animated video to explain Open Science Hardware (OScH) to a more general audience. We hope that by doing this, we can help increase understanding of OScH and also encourage participation in the global OScH movement. We plan on releasing the video in English, Spanish and French, and we’ve just finished up our first draft in English. We are happy to hear any feedback and comments you have by the end of this week!

-Bri :v:

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Super slick and nice! Glad you all are working on this. Will be great to share!

Here’s my main feedback to do what you want with

  1. it would be nice to have like a little splash screen or something right at the beginning to let us know the branding of the group’s producing it. I think this will be important, especially when the video gets shared around online as most people might not wait until the very end to see the different OSH groups who are contributing to this. So maybe just something right at the beginning? Or even just the gosh logo?.

  2. All of the humanoid characters seem to be either neutrally coded or masculine coded in terms of gender. I know they’re all mostly abstract, but since there are some that seem masculine, it might be nice to balance it out a bit with more feminine coded characters.

Many of the assets appear that they came from something like the noun project I’m guessing? There might be some woman scientist or non-binary scientist assets you could swap out easily?

  1. The part where they’re talking about culture kind of throws me off. Especially the part where they say science, and there’s an image of like a warrior guy brandishing a weapon and shouting arg. It kind of makes it seem like the goal of science is violence a little bit? I like the other part of it. Where they’re like building up fire and tools, and I get that later. They’re showing that people share culture and science in order to collaborate to hunt an animal. But I wonder if there’s other metaphors we could use.

Even just in terms of less violent imagery towards the kingdom Animalia, You could have similar metaphors going with people sharing, planting and harvesting plants. And then working together to grow and plant fields. Then you could not only have a metaphor about collaboration and tool development, but also about growth and growing things together.

It just kind of throws me off in the current animation with the point where we’re really trying to talk about sharing and collaborating seems kind of linked with a violent mob. Especially cuz you don’t see that the violent mob is working together to harvest an animal until the end of the sequence. I had kind of assumed they were going to go at war with some other group. But maybe I’m too cynical :slight_smile:

And I think that’s my only feedback!

Again, great work overall!

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The video looks great and quite enlightening! :blush:

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Quite an admirable effort, well done!!

A couple of minor quibbles however:

first of all, (though it may just be me being tired right now): the tone of the voice sounded a bit urgent and set my heart rate up, maybe a bit friendlier would’ve been better?

Also, I struggled a bit to see the clear connection between the Intro (i mean the first 50 seconds) and the rest of it. I found the main part super interesting and engaging, whereas I found the first 50 seconds a bit banal and sometimes irrelevant. I mean, everybody knows what science is, right? On the other hand, collaboration may actually be something more worth pointing out in the context of science, something more novel. So, to conclude with a suggestion, maybe consider shrinking the intro to 15 seconds, just put the message across that ‘Many problems in 21st century’ (5 seconds), science good (3 seconds), openness in science and collaboration even better (7 seconds).

I hope this helpful!!

Best Wishes,
Jah Loves
Haris

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I agree that, if possible shrinking the intro a bit could be very useful

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@briannaljohns Probably waaay too late for me, but a few quick suggestions for the record:

  1. I echo @hikinghack and @haris’s comments to choose more peaceful-looking imagery. I like the idea of agriculture instead of hunting for animals, and having more diversity or more gender-neutral characters is great.
  2. Ideally, the intro would use something that people would more closely associate with “science” rather than agriculture. Perhaps remixing glass-making to produce telescopes and microscopes?
  3. Agree a shorter intro is nice, and it should have a punchy message within the first 60 seconds for those who don’t watch the whole thing. I once worked with a videographer to make a short documentary of my citizen science project, and I asked them to produce a 1.5 minute cut and a 10 minute cut from the same footage, maybe you can do something like this.
  4. The video can end with some brief credits, and it should include license information. Hopefully the CC BY or CC BY-SA license.
  5. I’m guessing a good chunk of money has been spent to produce this video. I strongly suggest asking whomever is making it to give the “source code” to the video rather just the final output. This could include the project files that go with their video editing software, all assets used including images, audio, video, fonts, etc. Basically, all the raw ingredients needed to reproduce the video on our own. This way, we can adapt it to different purposes in the future!
  6. Once everything is done, I can help upload this to the GOSH account on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/@goshcommunity
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also late, similar comments (nice initiative, intro too long, needs more gender balance when there are people represented). I would also back the precedent remark, the first 25 seconds should contain the main message, be appealing enough so that people watch the rest of the movie.

In addition, I would try to be a bit more positive in the message, talking about missed opportunity instead of problems to solve. Also not putting price too much in front, as open source hardware is not always that cheaper if you need to pay an engineer to build it (maybe talk about local manufacture with alternative materials instead ?).

For the voice, you may consider a real actor voice, that makes a big difference in the feeling. (actor + studio will cost about 300-600 € for this kind of video length, in Germany)

You may check Open data is the new standard #engagerdm for additional inspiration.

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Hi again all,

Thank you for your excellent feedback. I am following up on this thread to inform you that we have incorporated most of your input into the video’s final version.

Some of the changes include a better gender balance of the animations, the addition of final credits, and the creation of a shorter version of the video that omits some of the introductory sequences. I have also contacted the video producer about acquiring some of the video assets (fonts, images, etc.) to add them to the Internet Archive.

Unfortunately, not all of your feedback could be incorporated at this time, mainly because we had already translated the script into multiple languages and recorded the voiceovers, making it challenging to change anything related to the script. However, we have added your feedback to Gitlab https://gitlab.com/gosh-community/osch-animated-video as a wiki in case someone in the future wants to create new versions.

Thanks again for your feedback; it is much appreciated!

Bri

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Very impressive and inspirational video.

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