Read to Them – One School, One Book Manifesto Video (Keynote Animation)

As promised in the previous post here’s the manifesto animation video made for Read to Them’s One School One Book program. You can switch on the “watch in high quality” option, fyi.

you may download the Keynote animation sample slides

I had a lot of fun stepping beyond the typical role of “the business people” into “the creative folk” making this animation. It was made 100% on iWork 08 Keynote in 9 hours. If you’re interested in making Keynote animations you can check out two slides that went into the video here.

The logic behind doing this was to articulate One School One Book and Read to Them’s ambition. A parent/principal/prospective corporate sponsor gets it better and quicker with a 2 minute video than 3 pages of content or an hour’s conversation with the founders. To give credit to Read to Them, they already do have a video with Gary Anderson speaking about the program. But an animation has so much more potential to be viral (now there’s another innocent little adjective everyone is turning into a noun, here’s the other).

I think it’s almost a no-brainer to do a video for social causes. I copied the idea from a recent social motivation video from Google.

Let me share all my references:

1. Google Project 10^100
   
2. The CommonCraft Show makes videos on several complex subjects “in plain English”. Here’s one on social networks. My parents, new to the Internet but excited learners, will learn so much better from this. Besides, so much fun!
3. Ek Chidiya, Anek Chidiya: While those were immediate references, here’s something I grew up watching, being in awe of. It’s an animation made by Indian animation stalwart, Bhimsain Khurana commissioned by the National Council for Research and Training. I remember watching it on the national channel, Doordarshan (the only channel on TV back then) through the 80’s and 90’s. Being a state channel Doordarshan had all the broadcast time for psa videos; I’m not complaining – they were the most entertaining bits on TV, at least for me. Here’s another legendry psa written by Indian ad heavyweight Piyush Pandey for national integration; a tearjerker for Indians.
   

In closing, here’s a rare interview with the stalwarts of Indian animation and comic book: Ram Mohan, Bhimsain Khurana, and Anant Pai. Perhaps making animation for over 50 years is what has still kept their childlike curiosity alive; at 75 they are just as kicked about computer animation as a 12 year old.

Update 11/16/2008: While I hadn’t seen this before the Read to Them project, here’s another mission animation from a non-profit organization, One Child Per Laptop – got to love the animation

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