Pandemic-Era Video Showcase and Critique

Unknown Speaker 03:11
Okay, well, it is 115. And we've got a full agenda. So I'm going to go ahead and get started. Make sure we don't run short of time. So greetings, everybody. Welcome to wherever you're joining us from. Good morning. Good evening, good afternoon. whatever time it may be where you are. Thanks for joining us for this pandemic era video showcase and critique. We wanted to put a session like this together both for folks who have been creating video content have had to make significant adjustments due to the pandemic and also for those who may be new to creating video content because of the pandemic. And we just kind of come out of a conversation that we're realizing for everybody. It's altered, how we've worked, and also how and what we create. And we have three great projects to share today that I think we'll be able to pull out some lessons from and discuss how these COVID adaptations may have an impact on museum video production in the future. So my name is Ryan Waggoner. I'm the director of creative services at the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, and I'm joined by three great co panelists today, and I'd like to have them introduce themselves now. So Jonathan, maybe you could go first and then Sarah Wambold. And then Sarah Cowan.

Unknown Speaker 04:23
Sure. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Ryan. My name is Jonathan Munar. I'm the Director of Digital at the New York based nonprofit are 21 Sarah Wambold and I have been doing versions of this type of room at conferences in years past or very excited for Ryan to lead us into a very focused version of the of this session are excited to be a part of this. Hi, everyone.

Unknown Speaker 04:53
Maybe I'll jump in there. I forget what Sarah you said. Brian. In the order. I'm Sarah Wambold. Let's see I visual description. I'm a 40 something year old white woman wearing kind of a orangish brown sweater. I'm sitting in my bedroom in Denver. I work for the met in New York and have been working remotely for about a year and a half. And yeah, Jonathan, I've been doing this for a while and at different conferences and Ryan has kindly always submitted projects to be critiqued. So he, he is in the same boat as the folks who submitted today so thank you very much or was in the same boat and so it's fun to be on a panel with the three of us and then we also brought in Sarah Cowan, Sarah, throw it over to you.

Unknown Speaker 05:54
Thanks. Um, I am a senior video producer at MoMA as of yesterday and I worked with Sarah Wambold At the Met up until then. And so it's very nice to see her here. And I'm so grateful to be part of this. I have been doing video in museums for over a decade and it's it's fun to see all the different kinds of projects and how people had to adapt over this very difficult period. And so I'm really grateful to the submissions today.

Unknown Speaker 06:32
Great, thank you all. And thanks again to Jonathan and Sarah Wambold, who had fully ripped this idea off from from museums in the web. So appreciate you laying the groundwork for us. So like I said, we have three projects that we're going to focus on today. And I want to give an extra thanks again to those who submitted we really appreciate that. So for each one, we're going to have the Creator producer introduce the project very briefly, and then we'll screen the video. And then our panel will offer some critique and feedback. And I hope that we'll also have some time for each where we can open it up to the audience. And I would invite you if you do have questions along the way, you can leave those in the chat. And if we have some time to go to audience questions, we'll get to those and you're also just welcome to unmute yourself and ask your question aloud. So the first video we're going to start with is from the Brandywine River Museum of Art. And from that for that we have Josh snap here, and I'd like to invite him now to introduce the project and then we'll take a look.

Unknown Speaker 07:28
Awesome. Yeah, thanks, right. So yeah, so I'm Josh, I'm from from the Brandywine. We're just outside Philadelphia. And so before the pandemic, we produce, you know, maybe about four or five videos per year. They're usually more involved videos, focused around exhibitions and fundraising campaigns, and they usually came with a budget so when we temporarily closed in, in 2020, we realized that we needed to leverage video a lot more on social media and to remember communications, just keeping our audience engaged. And of course, we didn't have access to the galleries. We were living in with filming in person and there was no budget, or no extra resources at all for this product for these projects. So we had to work around those things. So one of the things we did was create kind of a series of collection spotlights where we started with our audio guide content that we already had, and we you know, basically kind of harnessed our inner Ken Burns, by overlaying some visuals and you know, you know, making some kind of interact or, you know, kind of visual short videos based off that and we didn't you know, we didn't get into music or complicated graphics because we just didn't have time for that or resources. And honestly, a majority of times probably just spent on getting the subtitles. All right. So anyway, we got curators more comfortable with recording themselves at home eventually. And and so we were able to kind of transition this into new content that was more systematic and intentional. So the one we're going to be watching came a little bit later where we were doing a theme on Black History Month, and we're highlighting an artist that was new to our collection that most of our audience probably didn't know about. So basically crank these things out in bulk we released about one per week throughout the closure, which was a, you know, a lot for us. But, you know, it worked out we're still exploring, you know, this kind of this format. And so yeah, I'm thrilled to share it with you and to get any feedback.

Unknown Speaker 09:39
Awesome. Thanks, Josh. So let's take a look now at this video. One second. failing at screen sharing here, one more try. There we go.

Unknown Speaker 10:00
I'm Amanda burden curator at the Brandywine River Museum of Art. We're celebrating Black History Month by centering the work of black artists in the collection through a series of videos and posts. Clementine Hunter's painting entitled Zinnias is 24 inches tall and 18 inches wide, and is painted in oil on a canvas board. The subject is a bouquet of flowers, six bright Zinnias in yellow, red and pink and a daffodil on a russet colored background. Hunter a black woman artist is known for her interpretations of African American life in the south, rendered in the self taught tradition. Born in 1886, hunter spent most of her life as a field hand and cook on a cotton plantation in Louisiana called Melrose. The plantation was also an artists colony in the 1930s, giving her access to paint the materials with which she taught herself how to paint or in her own words, mark a picture in 1955 she decorated the African house at Melrose plantation with murals in her signature style, depicting narrative scenes of cotton picking churchgoing a wedding, and the pecan harvest among others. These works are based on her own memories and on the stories she heard of plantation life from others. Like Brandywine, Melrose plantation is a member of the historic artists, homes and studios, in honor of hunters lifetime of work there. When her works were exhibited in the 1950s segregation laws prevented her from entering the gallery where they were displayed. She eventually gained fame in the 1970s from which this picture dates for her lively and brilliantly colored work. She had a particular affinity for painting Zinnias so much so that a recent opera about the artist was entitled Zinnias the life of Clementine Hunter early in 2020 the Brandywine purchased this work by Clementine Hunter at an auction of the African American art from the Johnson publishing company, the publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines. The legendary art collection contained works by Elizabeth Catlett, Jacob Lawrence Henry ossawa Tanner and Carrie Mae

Unknown Speaker 12:29
Weems. Okay, so that is the project from Brandywine River Museum. And I'm gonna lead us off here with some feedback and then open it up to my other co panelists. So first of all, I want to give a shout out for the open captions. I think that was a really smart choice and I can, I'm with you, I have a lot of personal experience with the amount of time that it takes to create captioning and especially open captioning, but I think that's always well worth the investment and just wanted to start there and say, I think that was a really smart choice to go with open captions for something like this. And just the situation you described in your intro is something that's familiar to me and I think to MANY other people where you're working with very little to no budget, really no time to create new assets or resources, but still you have a need to create some fresh content. And I think that this is a really great example of creating something from primarily existing material. I thought it was an excellent kind of repurposing of this content you already had from your audio guide, which I think you mentioned. And then just a really simple use of still images of motion to keep to give it some visual interest. And just, I think a really strong example of creating engaging content with little overhead or kind of monetary commitment, which you mentioned. I thought the inclusion of the historical images were a nice addition and probably necessary just to kind of feel some of that visual space beyond the painting. I would have loved to have seen a photo of the artist if one exists. I don't know if that's something you maybe didn't have access to or or hadn't thought about but that was one thing I thought of when kind of looking at the the visual content that was shared. A quick technical note or question I did notice a slight kind of shift in the audio tone. And that maybe is a situation where you're repurposing some audio and recording new audio if I had to guess that's probably something that as we were discussing in our kind of pre meeting, most people probably aren't going to notice something like that but just something that Meyer picked up and then just a couple of notes on kind of the narrative arc. I felt like at the end, it kind of petered off in a kind of unexpected way where you're talking about the acquisition of the work, which I think was an interesting note but felt a little disconnected from the narrative arc to me. And another thing that we talked about in our kind of pre meeting was that you know, when you're putting out a piece like this, it's not only an opportunity to introduce your existing audience to the work of this artist and the painting, but it might also be an opportunity for you to introduce the institution itself because this video, you know, with an artist that is known, like Clemente and Hunter has a great chance of being, you know, maybe seen by people who don't know anything about the Brandywine museum. So I would love to hear, hear maybe just a little bit more about the museum itself and also kind of how this painting maybe fits in with the collection, why it was sought after by the museum, but that might have been a different way to kind of put a tail on the video that you might leave folks with a little bit of information about the museum itself, but overall, I think I thought it was a really nice piece. And impressive to see that you all were putting these out on a really regular basis. I think that's that's really great work. So happy to open it up to my other panelists if they want to share anything.

Unknown Speaker 16:07
tampin Oh, Sarah.

Unknown Speaker 16:10
Now you go you go. Um, Josh,

Unknown Speaker 16:13
I echo a lot of what Ryan has said, I think this is a great a great display of reusing existing assets and and kind of, I think, maybe enhancing some existing assets to like, you can kind of hear that audio shift so it's sounds to me like you recorded new audio to put with this which is great. Releasing one per week. You know, weekly cadence is a is a lot to commit to and so I really applaud you and your colleagues for taking this on. Particularly, I think maybe in your submission. You just say like this isn't anyone's full time focus, right, like everyone has already existing jobs. So trying to fit this in. So that's, that's really laudable. I think the the ones kind of suggestion I have as if you are looking to continue these and maybe producing new content is is particularly with this format, some attention to writing for the ear. You know, you're when you're making a video you that that is moving image, and you can get away with more in some ways, because you can use the visuals to explain what you mean or to kind of punctuate what you mean or emphasize it. But when you're kind of basically doing an audio format with some imagery attached. I think it helps to think of it as an audio exercise and not a video exercise. And so, you know, certain sentences like born in 1886 Hunter spent most of her life as a field hand and cook on a cotton plantation in Louisiana called Melrose. Reading that is is sort of digestible, but hearing it there, there are a lot of antecedents in there. There's a lot of prepositional phrases, and I think you could just, you know, to write for the ear you just simplify it so much and kind of imagine that you're having a conversation with another person in order to get those sentences, you know, subject, verb predicate, and, and just lean into that simplicity. It will sound more intimate that way. Which is a nice benefit to an audio format. And you could even experiment with actually placing your curators in conversation with someone who is kind of playing a producer role. If it's hard to get people to write that way. You know, you can set up some scenarios and try a few different things to try to get that sound to feel more conversational and intimate. But great job. As I say, I think this is really great that you've figured out a way to take some existing assets and produce something that can be released on a weekly cadence. That's no small effort.

Unknown Speaker 19:21
I totally agree with that. And I would also say, just thinking about the beginning and end and how you frame it, I realized that for this kind of weekly cadence, associating something with Black History Month and kind of explaining why you're putting it out could be the goal. But in terms of watching it a year later, three months later, you could think about whether now that you have a Facebook presence or YouTube presence, if it might be better to remove that and you could put it in the Metadata maybe but to make something that's more evergreen, and I think that would also go for the discussion of the acquisition, like it's a good reason to be making the video but the question is, does that have to be in the actual narrative of the video? Or does that kind of pin it to one time frame so just something to think about if you continue to make these

Unknown Speaker 20:16
I would echo everything that my fellow panelists have talked about. I absolutely agree. This is incredible that you can you know, scrap this to get scrap it I don't mean to be saved so harshly. But you know, to be able to scrap something very, very lasting together, you know, on a shoestring budget. I totally understand that. Like, you know, I love seeing that this, you know in the presentation here that we're looking at this on YouTube and you. You explain Josh that you also these films have a life on social as well. So, the thing that I would recommend is, you know, though, I understand that it takes a lot of time to craft, you know, a video to each platform. Start to consider the strengths of you know, what YouTube might provide versus what Instagram might provide. So looking at your YouTube page in particular, you know, there's hashtag opportunities there, you know, you can throw a clementine Hunter hashtag on there to, you know, thinking about how people are going to see it in this particular context, you know, YouTube, especially, you know, the potential of like, you know, you have anyone who is just searching YouTube for Clementine hunter or anything about Zinnias there's and you know, you have all these potential viewers coming into this that have nothing they have no idea who Brandywine is they don't know the existence of the they might not even know anything about the painting or the artist. So you had this opportunity to pull in an audience that is completely you know, unaware of what you are providing you're basically what are your presenting. So considering some of those options as well, and then along those like little, little, small touches, you know, open caching apps capturing degrees is very important in the context of a YouTube video. Maybe not so much, you know, you have closed captioning there. And there's something about the readability of it too, that you could flick it on and off. Or maybe you can scale the size. You know, in YouTube when you have these captions, captioning is great. Opening captioning works great on a platform like Instagram where there is no captioning available to you, but when you know you work with a platform that does have captioning available captioning options available, you know, sometimes it's nice to just load up an SRT file or just do it all in YouTube basically, and get your SRT file out of that, you know, and put it into your workflows and other places. All in all, I mean I think your use of archival photography was fantastic to see the pans and the transitions for that. I would have loved to have seen maybe like you know, the the zooms and the pans on the paintings are very, it's tough when you're working with one photo right and one one photo of a painting but you know, I would you know recommend considering you know, if there are any maybe shots of this painting placed in a gallery or or just something that that gives the viewer a sense of like, how does this painting exist in the world, right. You know, scale or something that gives you a little bit more of an emotional connection or a real world connection to the painting. And maybe something that's like, you know, for those of us that maybe don't know what a Zinio looks like, you know, even going so far so like, you know, pay paid a couple of bucks to get some, some stock photography of what the artists may have been seeing, you know, when she painted this, so, you know, there's that opportunity to, to, to illustrate context without necessarily directly tying it to, to the subject matter that that it was inspired from. But this is like, you know, to hear this audio to hear this story. It's like I learned a lot from this. And I think there's so much value in continuing to hear those types of guides that, you know, again, this is content that I don't think I would have encountered on my own.

Unknown Speaker 23:56
That's great. Thanks so much, Jonathan. And thank you all. We're gonna have to move on in the sake of time for the next one, but we can continue the conversation in the chat for sure. And thank you again, Josh, for offering this up for us to take a look at. So our next example comes from the Canadian War Museum and we have Marie Louise therewas here who's going to share a brief introduction on this project.

Unknown Speaker 24:22
Hi, folks. So I'm a creative development specialist at the Canadian War Museum. And just in case you're not familiar, we're located in Ottawa, Ontario. So it's a short animated film called Knight attack and it The goal was to add a dynamic experience to our second world war gallery and convey life at sea during the Battle of the Atlantic. And so there's an image of it in context, it plays on a large curved screen. It was planned originally as one of three short vignettes that could be selected and activated by visitors in the gallery using a touchscreen interface. And we began research and story development on this in 2019. So this was sort of planned pre COVID Actually, the story is told from the perspective of officers and crew on a Royal Canadian Navy escort ship, which in this case is a Corvette and it's taking place as it's escorting a convoy across the North Atlantic. And we base the story on archival records and memoirs. One of the reasons why we decided to use animation was in part because there's very little archival footage available and also because we thought it, we'd be able to evoke the sensation of being on the bridge of a ship and Knight on the ocean. It also gave us the freedom to vary the perspective and compress the storyline. And maybe we can have a look at the closer view of the installation. Now. So our museum COVID protocols include no tactile experiences, they've mostly been deactivated. So we decided to use infrared sensors for activation. You can kind of see them on either side of the touchscreen. There. So that also meant we had to redesign the touchscreen interface. Now we just have two states an inactive state that displays the intro, and duration and then during activation the screen switches to about these events, which provides some context about the story. We've discovered that infrared sensors are really sensitive. So the animation can be inadvertently activated or restarted while while it's playing. So that's something that we're still we still have to fix. And then in terms of COVID impact, there was an impact on production, the animators, the schedule was extended so the animators had lots of time to render the ship. And full historical detail and do lots of revisions which maybe they weren't thrilled about. There was a less positive impact on audio recording. We had few voice actors available to choose from and we had to record wearing masks in our sound booth so that wasn't great and in terms of install, we had to limit how MANY people were present. So there was a little less oversight from the team and the animators during install, and we also realized that there's some you know, it was hard to we haven't been able to do all the balancing of audio between the voices and the the sound effects. But maybe I'll so I'll stop there and we can have a look at it.

Unknown Speaker 27:26
Sounds great. Here it is.

Unknown Speaker 27:55
radar contact green for over a mile and a quarter sir. Tell the radar operator to hold on to the contact and moves here for it. Can you see anything number one? Not yet sir. radar operator says the object is small but getting larger standby for Star shell. Standby for Star shell. radar operator says three quarters of a mile there it is meant to starboard could be a fishing trawler. I can see the conning tower. It's a summary fled forehead. Let's get a better look. Firestar cell number one there it is. Trying to get away sir. Likely DEAI five degree starboard standby around July fire a snowflake sir. Yes fire snowflake there was submerging them by depth charges set pattern a standby depth charges set pattern a fire fire fire fire three going over them. What just happened? The torpedo left tenant just reported that the last two jets chargers blew the sob hop out of the water. Sounds like they'll never surface again sir. Let's make sure of that. You boats are hard to destroy How far have we gone since firing 500 yards bring us about see if they can pick them up again.

Unknown Speaker 30:18
So thank you. So I will just be leading the conversation here but feel free to jump in and anyone who has questions please put them in the chat or speak up. So I think that your points about it were really their true for how it comes across. I think that the different perspectives are very creative. Like it really keeps your attention in terms of like switching point of view and I thought the moonlight was very beautiful like they did a great job and I know how difficult animation can be one note is that I was really intrigued that you said that the archival materials were you know deck. What was it it was like deck logs and transcripts and a memoir. And personally I would have been interested to have that framing I know that I saw a photo of the you know text around the video and I know you mentioned that it's based on archival sources, but I think even being that specific maybe it's a nerdy thing for me but I think that it could really establish you know that this is based on a true experience because I think that the video on its own has a kind of it feels like it on its own lacks a bit of specificity like it feels like this one encounter. And even though there are some notes like the time of night, I think just framing it in that way could be really compelling and also it shows you know how much work you've done to try to enliven this material. I also think this is a really unique example amongst our examples today because it's an in gallery experience. It's not meant for an online audience. I was curious if you've thought about putting it online. And if you would want to put it online, I would have suggestions for maybe adding some context adding kind of a maybe a head and a tail that establish what this is and what the event was. So I'm just curious, maybe you can answer you know what, what the purpose of this wasn't if it was really only designed for this in gallery experience.

Unknown Speaker 32:33
Yes, it was only designed as an in gallery experience because it's in the context of, you know, other information about Corvettes and convoys, but I you know, I think it would if with the right framing, I think it would be interesting to put it online. We haven't we haven't explored that yet.

Unknown Speaker 32:51
Yeah. And I think like in terms of this being a pandemic era discussion, I think that the online experience is something that you know, MANY people tried to adapt their material to, so that you know, I think Josh's example is one of those. And so, um, I think it would be worth considering and also it might even make you reconsider how you present it in the gallery if you were to add that extra contextual material. Um, one other note is that I know in your submission, you mentioned that this is a gallery that has a lot of resonance for people, they have family history related to these events. And so my one critique, I think of just the storytelling is that it does feel a little anonymous or removed and very much about like the drama of course, like kind of it has this like action movie drama, but I think that you know, if there could be a more like human story of who was based on her memoirs, there's something is there some kind of account from someone that's a more first person reflection or something to make us attached to these characters because it felt a little like yeah, like action movie ask and and I think that that's exhilarating and in its own way, but knowing that people might be coming to like, reflect on family history or, you know, want to feel emotionally connected to the war. I think that you know, it would be a very different film and I I'm not suggesting that you should have made that but I think you know, it's something to consider. And yeah, and I am I was there was that I liked that you mentioned that it gave the pandemic kind of gave the animators more time and and your note maybe they didn't like that, because of all the different notes. But I did want to mention that I feel like the pandemic really shifted all of our priorities and made clear that sometimes deadlines are arbitrary, and that sometimes you can delay something to make it better and it's not always the end of the world. And, and I was I was just struck that that may have been the scenario you are in and you can see how much better a result you might get by just having a bit more time.

Unknown Speaker 35:22
Speaking of having more time, I wish we had like three times the amount of time we do for this session. But in the interest of time, we will need to move on to the next project to make sure we can get all three in but thank you so much, Marie Louise again for submitting and Sarah for leading our our feedback. And I do hope we can continue some of this conversation in Slack because I've got like five follow up questions for both of these already. And I would love to continue this. But our final project is from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and we have Benjamin Corman here to introduce

Unknown Speaker 35:52
them. Hi, everyone. Thank you Ryan. My name is Benjamin Corman. I'm a producer and editor in the digital department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art today I'm sharing met kids microscope, which is a new animated series that was created during the pandemic for our med Kids Program, which is for online viewers ages seven to 12. This is an animated series. It's the first animation project of this scale the museum has ever undertaken and it was undertaken because of the fact that we can no longer film project like this museum. It was something that we originally conceived of as being live action. The the series is about the scientific research that happens at the museum. It's a steam focused project. We had wanted to film in the galleries to feature the scientists themselves. But when everything closed down, the guy the labs that we have in the museum are so small that our COVID procedures wouldn't even allow two people into one room at one time, much less a film crew and so we started looking for an animation partner to work with us. We basically looked at it first as an audio project. And then as animation is you then pass off your audio to an animator and the animator we worked with Lisa Brockie oh who is wonderful and who has a lot of amazing experience working with not for profit organizations, not just the MIT but also like the Pulitzer foundation and MANY other intead among others. assembled a really fantastic team on her side and the result is my kids microscope. The first section is animated the very end of each episode. Includes a add home experiment, which I don't know if we'll have time to show today. But there's basically always an experiment that follows what you learn the information that you learn in each episode.

Unknown Speaker 37:44
Great, thanks, Benjamin. And so we will watch an excerpt of this one. It's a little longer so we'll watch the first three minutes together.

Unknown Speaker 37:59
Paints, dyes and fabrics come in MANY different colors. But where do those colors come? From? Sometimes they come from box. This is Coach O'Neill, a tiny insect native to Mexico, Central and South America. 1000s of years ago, people in the region figured out how to use them to bring great vibrant color to works of art. They did this by grinding the insect into a material called pigment.

Unknown Speaker 38:34
Pigments are substances that are used to impart color to an object.

Unknown Speaker 38:39
There are pigments all around us in paints inks, fabrics, and even food dyes. These days, MANY of these colors are made using factory chemicals. But cottonelle is different. It's what is known as a natural pigment.

Unknown Speaker 38:58
natural organic pigments come from the living world so a plant or any insect. The History of Art is full of examples,

Unknown Speaker 39:08
like Indigo, a plant which is reduced into the pigment used to color denim blue jeans, or the Purple Iris flower which was used to make green paint. cochineal makes a vibrant red pigment so vibrant that we still use it today in food dyes for pink and red beverages, really brings new meaning to the freeze bug juice. Ancient cultures were very skilled at developing technologies but how did artists figure this out without all the tools and research we have today?

Unknown Speaker 39:44
It starts with the five senses. It's touch that tells you if something is hard or soft, it's taste that tells you if it's sweet, so good to eat, or bitter, possibly medicinal or poisonous. And it's site that tells you if it's rich in color.

Unknown Speaker 40:03
We can't know exactly when Coach O'Neill was first used. But through trial and error. Ancient people learn that these insects could produce this color. They also learned that it can be used to dye yarns and fabrics by mixing it with powder from a mineral called alum. This helps coccineus color permanently fused to fabric. When mixed with thick gluey substances. It can be painted on surfaces like walls and sculptures. This pigment was so valuable that both the bug and the Nepal cactus that cottonelle live on were cultivated to the north in Mexico and South in the Andean desert of Peru where these textiles were made at

Unknown Speaker 40:55
all right, that was a that was I encourage everyone to to go and watch that full video. If that link is floating around there, like like Benjamin, like you said there's those great prompts for the Add home exercise for at the end. So I love I love the I love the use of animation style here. It gives a really nice consistent package to the entire thing. It's a nice consistent feel to warm its inviting and you know for you know, I would say in the world of internet some potentially triggering subject matter with I mean just the use of bugs I I'm not speaking for myself personally but knowing what people say on the internet and knowing what people say on YouTube in particular. You know, you can have a comment thread that goes in all sorts of directions. So it's, it's it's it's an inviting way to speak about subject matter that that should be very friendly, very or historically interesting and has a scientific value as well. So in that regards, you know, I love the the animation presentation, subtly calling to the subject matter, right you have this consistent texture of fabric pattern texture that makes appearances throughout as a kind of like a nod to to the use of of the the dyes and fabric the fabric as a as a major element storytelling element in the story. So I also love that you brought Markos voice a mad scientist voice into this as well. I think there's one thing that's like it's fun when you hear his voice kind of just jump in. There's something where it's like okay, this is a person this is a person who has a has a position at the Med. I want to know I want to see this person, even if it's just some kind of representation of a have a professional of an expert within the field, you know, if this person is chiming in, I don't really have that as much of a connection if I'm just hearing the voice and I understand that like you know, it's an audio it started as an audio only presentation. But something to consider there is that like you know when you're dealing with animation, you had this opportunity to introduce characters, right? Yeah, this opportunity to over the course of a series you know, have these characters come back or maybe you know, have some kind of like, you know, you know, thinking in the realm of children's programming, you know, something that people are going to recognize and want to be excited about when that person makes another appearance and another video you know, and then there's always that opportunity to to treat it seriously right to treat it with respect but at the same time have a lot of fun with it. So that's that's where it's very it's exciting to to hear another voice kind of break things up. There's a part later on in the video we're about to get into. I think that that I found a little bit it kind of threw me off when when when the narrative takes a turn into the Mets role as conservation. Like I understand that this is why this video exists but then it's a very specific, like almost like a 32nd advert on this is why MIT conservation lab, you know, which is great, which is great. It's important. It needs to be there for the audience. I don't know if it's necessarily something that needs to be justified, you know, in terms of the narrative, right? This is something that is for kids. Guess perhaps guided through adult with adult supervision but you know, something that is produced for kids, not necessarily something that perhaps needs to be part of the story. I say to that a little bit further in their you the story goes into a bit about the trade value of of the material, which also like you know, it's like, I see that it's relevant, I see that it's important but like perhaps it's not really part of the the core part of the narrative that you want to give across your audience. And it because it opens up all of these other kinds of questions about like, Oh really, this is commerce that was used, you know, et cetera, I don't really want to go too deep into it. And then finally, you know, with with the prompts at the end, that's it's so great to round it up with with some kind of, you know, at home exercise. I kind of want to the narrations, a little bit of narration there too, you know that you had this voice happening throughout the entire film. I got used to the to the voiceover and maybe there was something in that voiceover that could have helped guide me a little bit more through through some of the prompts at the end, or something to help you know, consider the type of person that's not necessarily reading the screen or reading the steps and is relying solely on that audio explanation to help help guide them through some of these at home exercise. So all in all, this is excellent, I love I love. I love education centered material. I love the way it's geared towards. You can try this at home too. Here's a little context and you can try this at home too. It's perfect, perfect content for the internet for YouTube in particular.

Unknown Speaker 45:43
It's great work sorry, I didn't I hope I didn't go too long on that right.

Unknown Speaker 45:52
Now that was great. The only thing I was really going to add Benjamin is just there. I really enjoyed a lot of the stylistic choices that were made. And I was particularly enjoying. I don't think we quite got to it in the video. But there's a segment where you're showing examples of works from the Mets collection and I thought it was really nice how those were framed and kind of put onto I think what is probably a fake, animated wall or a fake background. But I thought it just that kind of simple choice made those things feel real. Kind of going back to what we were talking about with Josh's video as well where maybe adding an element like that might help kind of grounded in reality, but I thought that was just a really nice stylistic choice as well. Here's a quick screen share there. That's this we didn't quite get to this but there's this nice progression of pieces I presume from the Mets collection that are related to the topic

Unknown Speaker 46:49
with one minute left any anyone in the audience want to make any comments in any of the three submissions or you know if any of the submitters want to come off mute and have the last word please do.

Unknown Speaker 47:13
If no one else will come up to you just to say thank you. This has been a really great experience and it's been really great to see the other work that other institutions are working on and I appreciate your taking the time to sort of put a spotlight on on our projects.

Unknown Speaker 47:29
Yeah, I want to echo that too. Just all the thoughtful comments are really really awesome. And yeah, this is the kind of thing it's it's hard to get this kind of feedback, this kind of level feedback when when you're in your own little bubble at work. So this is this is wonderful.

Unknown Speaker 47:42
Yes. Thank you. Thank you to all of you

Unknown Speaker 47:47
think Well, I think we're at time. Thanks again to all of our folks who submitted and for everyone attending. We appreciate it, and hope we can continue these conversations in other ways.

Unknown Speaker 47:58
Thank you everyone. Thanks everybody. much. Thank you