He also makes videos through the Gapminder Foundation, a non-profit venture he started with family members to promote “sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information.” They describe themselves as a modern online-museum helping make the world understandable.

In this video, Professor Rosling, does a simple yet appealing presentation to camera, using props for graphs instead of animated graphics, to dispel the common myth that improving child mortality will lead to overpopulation.

Simply yet nicely photographed, Professor Rosling appears here all-in-white, against a white background, and using a white table. Only his face and the props (of graphs and population) have any colour, drawing the eye throughout.

It’s an interesting technique using props here. Graphics would have been the obvious choice but I think the tactile nature of the props give the statistics a nice weighty feel. It would be interesting to know if they did this intentionally or they simply did not have the resources for fancy graphics. Either way, the result is very effective and this short video explains the concept very clearly of why better child health outcomes lead to smaller family sizes.

Of course the main star of Professor Rosling’s videos is Professor Rosling. This one with him alone in a quiet studio, while very effective in presentation, arguably does not do justice to how entertaining his professorial persona is… that is far more evident in front of an audience, such as in his many popular Ted talks.

I will feature more of Han’s Rosling’s videos in future blogs, but in the meantime I’d strongly recommend looking him up at Gapminder and Ted.

In its concise two-minute running time it examines three aid myths using simple language, a well-developed argument, and an engaging tone.

Adding to that, Nye uses the props of a dollar bill, a penny, and a drafting table. Then some clever animating info-graphics are superimposed over the table. And it’s nicely photographed in a studio, with out-of-focus studio fans as backdrop.

All in all this is a near perfect package that has had over 122,000 views on YouTube, which is high for a development video.

They commissioned Jakarta-based Australian filmmaker Jolyon Hoff for the project, based on his proposal to avoid overt donor messaging and produce the video as a short documentary featuring Acehnese survivors of the tsunami telling their stories their way.

The result is a moving and visually striking account by survivors who describe the frightening reality of the event and the years that followed. This 25-minute film really highlights the potential a documentary can have to communicate aid messages while still standing as a powerful work in its own right.

Hoff filmed the short documentary over 11 days in Aceh, accompanied by a very capable, and entirely Indonesian, crew of 7 sourced from Jakarta and Aceh.

Conventional wisdom might suggest shooting a film like this on a small DSLR to allow maximum portability and agility. But Hoff opted for going with a larger high-quality RedOne digital cinema camera, sourced from Focused Equipment in Jakarta.

“I felt the smaller cameras would be too trivial for this film. It was heavy though, which prompted me to be more thoughtful and respectful in my approach. I think you can see that in the footage. In return, the interviewees saw me setting up this big serious looking camera and gave me respect as well. I think it helped them to open up about such an emotional subject. They felt like this film was going to take their stories seriously.“

The majority of post-production was also carried out in Indonesia, on a turnaround time of 8 weeks, which is tight for a project of this length and complexity.

The film was shown in Jakarta through December and January at an exhibition called “Build Back Better” reflecting on life in Aceh 10 years after the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and has since been widely viewed on USAID’s website and USAID Indonesia’s YouTube channel. It was also screened for Indonesia’s outgoing president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as part of the commemorations and it is being considered inclusion in the permanent exhibition of the Tsunami Museum in Aceh.

This campaign was launched earlier this year by two Canadian university students, Christina Guan and Kaelan MacNeill, and has attracted a good deal of global media attention. It aims to raise awareness of the irresponsible side of the $2 billion voluntourism industry, which the campaign suggests can turn aid and social change into a commodity if voluntourists do not properly do their research before embarking on their travels, where “volunteers treat their trip like any other act of consumption and trample into host communities with a mindset of vacationing and tourism, pursuing photo opps and messy nights out instead of a true learning experience.”

Here the campaign has used video to cleverly turn the issue on its head, with If Voluntourists Talked About North America:

The aim of this campaign is “not to shame volunteers into hating themselves but to empower them to pursue their passion in a responsible way.” With around 38,000 YouTube hits the video has been extremely successful in helping to drive that message. It’s a very funny and a very capable production, yet the pair produced the video themselves with zero budget. They used a friend to perform and filmed in half a day, editing it themselves on Adobe Premiere the same evening.

Interestingly, the video explains very little of the campaign’s specifics, instead using humour to hook us in and highlight the nature of the attitudinal problems the campaign addresses. It then refers us to the website to learn about the issues and solutions in depth. It’s great example of a clever low-budget video effectively driving a development campaign forward.

In the run up the 2015 Australian Budget, which was known to be cutting Australian aid to unprecedented levels, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Weekly ran a video segment that cast a satirical eye over the arguments for reducing aid, presented aid’s economic and security benefits, and highlighted the lack of awareness in the general public about how little is actually spent.

“How much do you think Australia spent on aid prior to the 2015 Budget? 20%, 10%? The answer is actually 0.22% (a number that, even if you double it, is still rounded down to zero)… aid is such a small piece of the Budget pie that we’re actually giving the bits of the piece that are stuck to the knife when you cut it”

The Weekly posted the segment to YouTube following the broadcast, where it was tweeted and shared on Facebook by NGOs, ACFID, the Campaign for Australian Aid, and Mamamia; and subsequently re-tweeted and shared widely on other social media. At last count the video had over 41,000 YouTube views. That might not sound like that much, but to put it in context typical viewing numbers of other segments from the Weekly, on their YouTube channel, are around 3,000… with the exception of a segment on internet piracy at 30,000. To me this shows that informative and entertaining video about international development can gain a lot of traction online.

An even more cost effective approach can be animating still images. Many global development organisations, from large donors through to NGOs, are often holding substantial libraries of images that can be repurposed as video content (assuming appropriate consents and permissions have been sought from talent at the time of image acquisition.) In addition, field staff can often readily generate still images (by taking them themselves, or by hiring local photographers) and email them back to a central location for collation into a video product.

Earlier this year I was fortunate enough to be producer, through contentgroup in Canberra, of an animated video for UN Women Australia. It was their annual fundraising video, released for International Women’s Day.

This powerful piece was assembled with a collection of images supplied by UN Women. It was edited and animated using Final Cut X. A project like this takes careful selection of key images, and judicious placement of key messages, in this case through graphics. Less can be more with graphics, and a mistake that is often made in videos is to try and overload them with too much onscreen information. Here the video strikes a good balance between text and letting the images do the work.

Music is also extremely important. Commercial tracks can be prohibitively expensive for projects such as these (unless an artist grants use of a track as support to the project), but these days there are many resources available online to source good-quality low-cost production music.

With all the elements in place the actual animation can be a relatively straightforward process, and a draft edit can often be done in a just a few hours on tools like Adobe After Effects or Premiere, Avid, or Final Cut Pro 7 or X. Here the images are being gently zoomed into, with some selected areas having been blurred, then dissolves or fades-to-black added. The text too has some gentle blurs and wipes to help keep the video dynamic and engaging.

It’s a great example of using animated still images to tell a story.

I also wrote a blog post about this video for contentgroup’s website earlier this year, reflecting on the changing face of visuals in development communications, it can be viewed here.

This video from Guardian Global Development is a great example of a very well made animated infographic, that cleverly and entertainingly conveys a few simple yet powerful facts: more people around the world have access to mobile phones than they do to toilets… 2.5 billion people don’t have access to sanitation facilities… women and girls living without access to toilets spend more time each year looking for somewhere to go than the entire world spends watching YouTube.

But the simplicity of animated infographics can be deceptive. They can take a great deal of work to make, and quite a number of people involved in the process. First the data needs to be sourced, then key messages to convey from that data need to be identified. After that a script can be generated. Then it’s time to generate artwork, which is either originated by designers or sourced from libraries, after which a designer can carry out the animation work, which can be a complex and time consuming process. Finally music and sound effects need to be added, voiceovers (when required) recorded, and an audio mix completed.

This Guardian video was made last year by a team of London based journalists, designers and audio specialists (Jon Henley, Alex Purcell, Mark Rice-Oxley, Pascal Wyse and Mustafa Khalili). Guardian Global Development is sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

As the video was designed for an audience that was reasonably informed on M&E and development issues, Australia Indonesia Education Partnership Outreach Services (EPOS, managed by URS) recently decided to make shorter general public outreach versions of the video, which have now been posted on the Education Partnership website and the Kang Guru YouTube channel. The English version can also be viewed in the player below:

With versions in both English and Bahasa Indonesia, the 5-minute (approx) videos work to give an informative general overview of the situation of madrasah in Indonesia and outlines some of the ways the Education Partnership provides assistance.

The video features three madrasah. One in Lampung Province in southern Sumatra, one in Bulukumbu Province in South Sulawesi, and one in Jember Province, East Java. We filmed for two to three days at each school, interviewing in both English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Interestingly, since filming all three madrasah have made visually noticeable improvements through the use of block grant funds for repairs and improvements to their facilities.

The three minute film was filmed in Malawi in 2012 to show the difficulties that millions of girls face in going to school, and how education gives them and their communities the chance to improve their lives. The film was made by a Plan UK team of co-directors: Mary Matheson, Shona Hamilton, and Raj Yagnik… who used a stop-motion technique of animation to join together thousands of still photos of the actors to create the live action animation effect.

The film is extremely effective and went on to win the UNICEF Award for Best film promoting children’s rights at the prestigious 2013 International Animation Festival in Annecy, France. It was also shown at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival.

To me this is a great example of how powerful and engaging short films about global development can be, and I admire Plan for making it. I hope other development organisations can find inspiration in its creativity.

To see a little of how the stop motion technique worked, a very interesting behind-the-scenes video from the shoot can be seen below:

Me photographing our cameraman, videoing a student learning in a madrasah (Islamic school) in Lampung, Indonesia. Madrasah are host to about one fifth of Indonesia’s 30 million school students.

I’ve been in video, TV and media for over 25 years as a producer, a manager, a director, an editor, a scriptwriter, and I also do some graphics and camerawork. In that time I’ve worked in factual, government corporate, lifestyle, music, news and sport.

The PNG Rugby League Grand Final. One of the many sporting events we filmed at EMTV. Investment in sport in PNG is an important development activity carried out by international donors. It helps nation building, develops communities and facilitates private sector investment.

But over recent years it’s global development that has started to intrigue me as an area to focus my skills on. This interest started some years back when I accompanied my wife on her AusAID posting to Port Moresby.

I was fortunate enough to find a job there overseeing production in the TV station EMTV, where I was able to meet and work with some amazing people. It also opened my eyes to the challenges of developing countries, the place of media within them, and the way that development organisations communicate what they do (or, sometimes don’t.)

The reasons I find it interesting are many: the work, issues and approaches are not only thought-provoking and complex, but they also bring benefit to so many people. Yet, to the general public I feel like aid and development are not as well understood as they should be. Call me naïve but I think Australians should not only be well informed about their aid program, but that they should also be proud of it… and maybe even want to have some input into how it works. And I am particularly interested in how visuals can support development, especially video.

So, with my family and I recently returning from an Indonesian posting to live in Canberra, I have decided to take my consulting to the next level with Go Spin Productions.

This blog will feature reflections on aspects or approaches of some of the projects I have been working on, and I also plan to link to some of the very best global development video and other visuals that I find as I scour the web (so that you don’t have to.)

Please feel free to leave comments, or to get in touch with me using my contact details below, even if just to say hello, suggest posts etc.