Even if you do speak French, these are hard to watch
OK
Witness is a wonderful organization
Let me get that out of the way up front.
I have met with them a few times over the years, and trust me, they are highly dedicated and really doing God’s work.
Their motto is ‘See It, Film It, Change It’.
I am all for that.
And what I would like to change is the kind of videos they are making.
Witness was founded in 1982 by musician Peter Gabriel, with money from The Reebok Foundation.
The idea was and remains to empower people with video to tell their stories to the world – to “make sure their voices are heard”.
And they have fantastic contacts with people who really do need their stories told and their voices heard.
So the potential here is limitless. Really.
The problem is not with the concept, nor with the technology.
The problem is with the final product.
It’s a mess.
It is for the most part an unwatchable, incomprehensible mess.
Important, for sure.
But messy.
We live in a world in which video is increasing the lingua franca of day to day communications.
The average American watches 4.5 hours of TV a day. And they go to the movies.
They have an expectation of a certain level of quality – both production quality and storytelling quality.
It’s not hard to achieve. You will know this if you have spent any time on nyvs, which IÂ hope you have.
But we always say that above all, the product must be perfect.
It has to be. There is no room (and no excuse really) for less than perfect.
These people in particular need the world to listen
But just sitting someone down in front of a video camera and interviewing them, no matter how important what they have to say (even if they say it in French) does not leverage off of what the medium does best.  It’s a visual medium. It’s great at communicating ideas and telling stories.
But the Witness videos don’t do that.
Now, I have not look at all of them. There is a considerable archive for sure
But the ones I have seen all suffer from the same problem, for the most part.
Messy execution.
A great story (and they are all great stories) is not an excuse to deliver a mess.
Because if its a mess, no one will look at it.
(Except perhaps people who made it or who know the people who made it or who are already ‘on board’)
And so what then is the value of preaching to the converted?
It’s ironic, because Witness has a very nice, very slick, very well produced and very coherent video to get out its message
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a_-Eq8OoCI&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]The problem is that the videos that they are actually producing under the aegis are nowhere near as well produced or coherent as the one above.
But they have to be.
And they can be.
Witness is almost there.
They’ve done all the hard work.
But they have to clean up the last hundred feet.
Or all the rest of this is a waste of time.
If no one watches the video – if no one wants to watch the video – then what is the point of all the other effort?
