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.