Hey guys! So Chris, Stephanie, and I chatted about the direction of our project today and here is an update.
We still want to stick with a PSA video about the privatization of ownership of exotic pets. Realistically, the video will be around 3-5 minutes long which is about the length of most of the PSA videos we have been watching online for our research. Instead of using Sand Cats as the central figure for the video completely, we have shifted to be using tigers as that. This is because we took all of your suggestions into consideration and also did an extensive amount of research on the lifestyle of Sand Cats and their upkeep, and it seems as though they are not as high maintenance and violent as our imaginations wanted to believe. We found out that there is a huge market for people who want to purchase tigers from India and that this would be a really good catalyst to discuss the issue that we really want to communicate our viewers to, which is the privatization of ownership of exotic pets.
We are going to have humor in the video, but of course, our main goal is to be informative and helpful to our viewers. What we like about our topic is how it extends into an issue that many people are not nearly as aware of in conjunction with how vast this issue actually is.
Something that we have been battling with is how we are going to publicize the video to the Lincoln Park Zoo's audience. What we have decided on is that we are going to go onto the LPZ's various social networking site profiles (ie. youtube, flickr, yelp, facebook, twitter exc.) and post links to the URL of our video on youtube as comments. We are also going to make fake tags with our URL on them and attach them to stuffed animals in the LPZ's gift shop. These may not be the best methods but they are what we could think of, so if you guys have any other suggestions, let us know!
Hi guys,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this update, it is very thoughtful and the direction you are going and the reasons for it make sense.
I think your general strategy for how to make it accessible to the LPZ visitor community is a good one - clever and extensive use of the social network sites and meta-tags and photo-tags I think might be very effective (and hopefully this will then also spread it further afield, to people who might be interested in keeping a tiger - perhaps a non-zoo-goer in Texas).
A lot of the success of the video will be in its content (which must be solid and well-researched) as well as its watchability, appeal, and production quality, so be sure to spread your efforts to make the piece overall very strong. One issue to consider is if you are using a lot of found footage or images is that they integrate well (narratively as well as technically and formally - make sure the video doesn't look too amatuer in a way that is easy to dismiss)
Looking good! Start working quickly and in earnest.