Animation – Page 2 – Open Minds!

The Meatrix Reality: Mixing animation, activism and spoof

When I gave up eating all meat nearly 15 years ago, I had some explaining to do.

Breaking away from the pack is never that easy. Friends and colleagues wanted to know if I had suddenly gone religious (most certainly not: I practise no religion and frown upon all); or become an animal-hugger (well, not quite); or if I was too sick to eat a ‘normal diet’ anymore.

That last one was closer to the truth. I became a partial vegetarian because I wanted to stay healthy. I realised how unhygienic meat production and distribution were in my part of the world, and yes, I was also sensitive about the excessive cruelty to animals who end up on dining tables.

And it’s not just in Asia that organised meat production is increasingly hazardous to human health (not to mention the untold suffering by farm animals and the growing power of big agri-business companies). Animal rights and environmental activists have been pointing these out for years. And as powerful documentaries like Fast Food Nation (2006) documented, it is not only meat that’s crushed in the powerful mincing machine, but the whole of society.

But just how do we carry this message to the young Digital Natives who are the most eager consumers of meat and fast food? As we discussed some months ago, the big challenge is to take complex development issues in the right durations (shorter the better) and right formats (mixed or pure entertainment).

The Meatrix Moopheus

I was delighted, therefore, to belatedly discover the innovative and insightful series called The Meatrix. Funnily, I heard about it from two sources almost at the same time. A Malaysian activist I was visiting in Georgetown, Penang, last week highly recommended it. Two days later, my colleague Manori Wijesekera returned from having screened one of our own films at the 16th Earth Vision Film Festival in Tokyo – where The Meatrix was a finalist in the children’s environmental film category.

The Meatrix is an animated spoof on The Matrix trilogy (1999 – 2003). It uses humor and thinly veiled characters and situations from the original Matrix films to educate the uninitiated about factory farms.

Evidently, it was made with the blessings of the Wachowski brothers who created the science fiction thriller series. The first animation, The Meatrix, starts when Moopheus the Cow finds Leo the Pig at a family farm and informs him that corporations are taking over the way farms used to be. By taking the blue pill, Leo can remain at ease in his current situation, or by taking the red pill, Leo can see just how far the rabbit hole goes. (Of course, the good Leo takes the red one.)

Watch the first animation on YouTube:

In this case, the Meatrix is the illusion created by big time agricultural corporations who have taken over most family-run farms in the west, and turned them into ruthless factories producing meat and dairy products. Those who take on the Meatrix – at grave risk to their life and limbs – reveal how these factory farms are pumping steroids, antibiotics and growth hormones to maximise production, exposing unsuspecting consumers to major health risks like mad cow disease and antiobiotic resistance.

There are two short sequels to the original Meatrix: The Meatrix II: Revolting, and The Meatrix II½. They all pack action, suspense and even a bit of romance….just like the Matrix films did. And all the Meatrix animations are under five minutes in duration – just right for the fast media generation!

The Meatrix is collaboration between GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment) and Free Range, a cutting-edge design company with a social conscience. It’s the mission of GRACE to eliminate factory farming and to preach the message that sustainable agriculture is both a better environmental and economic choice for rural communities.

In February of 2003, Free Range developed the Free Range Flash Activism Grant, offering the prize of a flash movie production to forward the work of a worthy nonprofit. GRACE was the first recipient, in recognition of its important work on farm reform.

When The Meatrix I launched in November 2003, the viral grassroots film broke new ground in online advocacy, creating a unique vehicle in which to educate, entertain and motivate people to create change. The Meatrix movies have been translated into more than 30 languages and are now the most successful online advocacy films ever with over 15 million viewers worldwide.

Get involved – what you can do to stop the Meatrix from marching on and on to restaurants and homes of the world

The Meatrix animations and the interactive website built around them are fine examples of crossing the other digital divide (between Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives) that I have been writing about. This is Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) with none of the pomposity and preaching of UN agencies and other development organisations who are, sadly, trapped in their own version of a Verbiage Matrix where text, text and more text seems to be their whole reality.

It’s time some of our development friends took a red pill to see what lies outside their charmed and illusory circles.

PS: By the way, I still eat fish and other seafood, largely because on my frequent travels in Asia I turn up in places where being a complete vegetarian is simply not realistic (try Korea, for example). I now say I eat only those creatures that swim, but none that walks on land. One of these days, I will give up temptations for all flesh…

What’s local in our mixed up, globalised world?

I belong to what’s arguably the biggest club in the world, whose members number not in millions but billions. Everywhere I go, I meet fellow members and, sooner or later, conversation drifts to our shared membership in – parenthood.

Last weekend, I was absorbing the sights, sounds and smells of the Laguna province in the Philippines in the exalted company of academic colleagues from the College of Development Communications, University of Philippines Los Banos. At one point, we walked past some old houses designed in Spanish style – a reminder of the country’s strong Spanish legacy.

I heard how the Filipino language has absorbed or adapted hundreds of Spanish words, so much so that the younger generations don’t realise the Spanish origins of many words they use everyday.

One colleague related a story. Her daughter (now 16) had been a fan of ‘Madeline‘ – an animated series based on the popular children’s books by Ludwig Bemelmans, an American author of Austrian and German origins. Read more about Madeline animated TV series.

Happy coincidence: my daughter Dhara (still 11) and I are fans too of the smart and adventurous little French girl who lives with 11 other kids Miss Clavelle’s boarding school in Paris. Although the smallest girl, Madeline nevertheless manages to get herself into one predicament after another, giving her friends and teachers much to worry about. In the end, though, she always comes out all right.

Madeline is a good friend of the Spanish Ambassador’s son, Pepito. The young boy occasionally slips in a few Spanish words or phrases. This happened in one episode when Pepito was talking about sombreros.

The Filipino girl was excited. She exclaimed: “Mom, Pepito is talking in Filipino!”

It’s a small reminder of how delightfully mixed up our cultures are – and not just in language. Many of our metaphors, references and other expressions have been borrowed and adapted from other cultures and traditions in far corners of the planet. After a generation or two, few remember the origins.

It’s becoming impossible to discern or define what is ‘local’ anymore in this rapidly globalising and integrating world. Sociologists and communication researchers who split hairs about preserving ‘local content’ have a romanticised notion that is hard to find in the real world.

‘Content creation’ describes something that we journalists, as well as film-makers, writers and creative artistes have been doing for centuries. For much of that period, content was entirely local. It was only in recent decades that information and communications technologies (ICTs) enabled content to be swapped around the world at the speed of light.

And some ICT activists feel the need to make content more local again. No doubt an ideal. But I keep asking them: just what is local anymore in our rapidly integrating and hopelessly mixed up world?

Does it really matter anyway, except to the cultural purists who live in ivory towers?

Dewitt Wallace, the American founder of the Reader’s Digest magazine, was fond of pointing out how much his publication had become a part of the everyday lives of millions of people worldwide. One of his favourite anecdotes was about two children born and raised on a Caribbean island.

On their first visit to the United States, the kids were walking on the streets of New York, in the magazine’s home state of New York (Reader’s Digest is owned and published by The Reader’s Digest Association, a privately held company based in Chappaqua, New York, but the mailing address is actually Pleasantville, New York). On seeing the magazine on sale at newsstands, one of them exclaimed: “Look dad, they have the Reader’s Digest here too!”.

I personally think we should focus more on content that is locally relevant and locally useful. If it is also locally generated, that’s well and good — but does the point of origin matter too much in this knowledge society, when we are swapping electrons and ideas across political boundaries?

Release Ozzy Ozone held prisoner by brand guardians!

In September 2007, I wrote about Ozzy Ozone, an energetic, cheerful little ozone molecule – part of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere that prevents the Sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays from coming through and causing skin cancer, cataract and other health problems.

Ozzy Ozone is part of a global public education effort by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to tell everyone how harmful UV rays are to our health, and how Ozzy and his fellow ozone molecules are literally protecting life on earth from being zapped out.

I called Ozzy the little molecule on a big mission — to tell all humans to soon phase out using certain chemicals that, when released to the air, go up and destroy his kind.

Last week, while attending a UNEP meeting in Bangkok to plan the next ozone communication strategy for Asia Pacific, I heard some disturbing news: little Ozzy has become a prisoner of his brand guardians. As a result, he is not as free as he could be to roam the planet, spreading the vital ozone message.

Anne Fenner, Information Officer of UNEP’s OzonAction Programme revealed how she routinely turns down requests to produce toys and other material using the popular character.

“I have had so many requests from companies, but we cannot allow commercial exploitation of this brand,” Anne said.

I was stunned. Here is one of the more popular communication products to emerge from the UN, not generally known for such successful engagement of popular culture. And there we were, brainstorming on ways to get the ozone message to large, scattered (and distracted) audiences.

Ozzy was created by a graphic artist in Barbados, as part of a government-supported campaign to raise public awareness on ozone layer thinning. This cartoon character served as a “mascot” and was very effective in raising awareness in Barbados. The cartoon series was printed in local newspapers. Additionally, promotional items produced for local public awareness and education campaigns using the Ozzy graphic include posters, key rings, rulers, erasers, refrigerator magnets, mouse pads, pens, pencils, stickers, and envelopes.

The character was so popular that UNEP struck a deal with Barbados to ‘globalize’ Ozzy. An animated video was produced, along with a dedicated website, comic strips and other media adaptations.

Ozzy has been a run-away success, giving UNEP a high profile, widely popular character — and a great deal of media coverage and interest. The kind of media engagement that is typically enjoyed by Unicef, the most media-savvy of all UN agencies.

But we now know that Ozzy’s brand guardians don’t allow him to go as far as he could. They may be playing by the rules, but do they realise that huge opportunities are being lost?

There we were, a small group of journalists, communicators, scientists and government officials discussing for three days how to get the biggest bang for our collectively limited buck where ozone messaging is concerned.

It was frustrating to know that the best brand ambassador has been locked up in brand integrity and copyright restrictions.

I suggested to Anne Fenner that protecting the brand integrity need not be so rigidly pursued. For example, careful franchising could be undertaken based on a set of guidelines — and the royalty could go into a trust fund that supports ozone communication work.

Indeed, the challenge for development communicators everywhere is to find the common ground between the public interest and the commercial interest. In this era of globalised media and CSR, the two interests are no longer mutually exclusive. Some might argue they never were.

The long-established copyright regimes themselves are being questioned, challenged and bypassed by a growing number of research, advocacy and activist groups. Many now publish their academic or artistic work under Creative Commons licenses, that enable their creators to be acknowledged and retain some control — and yet allow many types of uses without excessive restriction.

When TVE Asia Pacific recently released an Asian regional book called Communicating Disasters, our co-publisher UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok proposed that the book be under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. We were happy to go along.

UNEP has some catching up to do. Turning the pages of lavishly illustrated Ozzy Ozone comic story books (of which 3 titles have come out so far), I found that UNEP has the standard copyright restriction. However, they add a line: “This publication may be reproduced in whole or part and in any form for educational or non-profit purposes without special permission from the copyright holder, provided acknowledgement of the source is made.”

That’s encouraging – but not good enough. What happens if a commercially operated media organisation wants to use this content for public interest? Will they qualify under ‘educational or non-profit purposes’?

Probably not. And that’s when the dreaded copyright lawyers could come marching out.

It’s the assorted lawyers and over-cautious officials who are keeping Ozzy Ozone a virtual prisoner.

And sadly, little Ozzy is not alone. Everywhere in the publishing and media world, we can find many examples of how creative works are being held back – usually by over-protective lawyers or accountants. Sometimes that’s the case even if the artistes or media professionals themselves would much rather let go of the rights.

In July 2007, I wrote a blog post called ‘The lawyers who locked up the butterfly tree’ — which revealed how lawyers working for the publicly-funded BBC had systematically blocked a multi-award winning African documentary film from being used for environmental education, awareness and advocacy. All because the BBC had partly funded its production, and therefore had a claim on its copyright.

So here’s our plea to Ozzy’s brand guardians in UNEP: let him roam free, taking the vital message to millions. And while at it, let him make some money (from franchisees) which can suppot the rest of UNEP’s ozone communication work.

And if some spoilsport of a copyright lawyer gets in the way, tell him/her to take a beach vacation — without sunblock.

Internet People: Can you spot who everyone is?

This is an amusing and clever video I’ve just come across on YouTube: Internet People. As its creators say “it’s an animated tribute to the internet people of the world, wherever you may be.”

It celebrates those ordinary people who found expression — and sometimes, fame — on YouTube before political campaign managers and corporate spin doctors realised its potential.

Animated by Dan Meth, with music by Dan Meth and Micah Frank, Internet People captures and celebrates our shared Internet experiences over the last half-decade with cartoon caricatures that are somehow funnier than the original footage.

“I dare you to watch it just once—or to get all the references after even three viewings,” says animator Meth.

Dan Meth is about to have his own cartoon series – the Meth Minute 39 – on Channel Federator. So watch out!

The Three Amigos: Funny Condoms with a serious mission

For some reason, my blog post with the highest number of daily hits for the past few days has been what I wrote in mid April: ‘Beware of Vatican Condoms – and global warming’.

I’m not sure if the interest is really in condoms, the Vatican or global warming, but since we must be demand-driven, here’s a new condom story! It concerns the three funniest condoms I’ve met.

Image courtesy Three Amigos website

They are called The Three Amigos – they are three differently shaped and coloured condoms, each with distinctive personality. They go places — certainly more than your average condom — to airports, forests, football games, recording studios, even television talk shows!

They are funny, amiable and out to have a good time. Occasionally they are also fallible and gullible — just like many humans are.

And like many of us, they grapple with hard choices in life – for example, between caution and temptation, or between right and wrong.

So far there are 20 adventures of The Three Amigos — each no longer than a minute: in those precious few seconds, a compact story is told with stunning effect. Talk about packing a punch.

Wherever they go, and whatever they do, the three friends have one mission: to remind us of many ways in which we can help stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The Three Amigos is a series of twenty Public Service Announcements (PSAs) in the form of short comedic sketches, featuring three animated, talking condoms. Some 80 volunteers in Canada, India and South Africa have created this ground-breaking behaviour modification programme to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

It is a multi-award winning series that has been endorsed by Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who believes these PSAs are a powerful communicating tool to encourage people to change their behaviour.
Read Desmond Tutu letter here
See testimonials from all over.

The Three Amigos

The Three Amigos is a north-south joint production. Its producers are Brent Quinn of South Africa and Firdaus Kharas of Canada. They are jointly responsible for the project and its contents.

Firdaus Kharas, who was also the Director of the series, is Ottawa-based and specializes in the creation of television programmes, feature films and animation. Most of the productions are international in creation and on international themes such as children’s rights.

We met Firdaus in person when TVE Asia Pacific organised the International AIDS Film Festival 2004 in Bangkok, as part of the XV International AIDS Conference held in the Thai capital.

We screened The Three Amigos every day, always to a packed house. Amidst the often depressing, long-format documentaries dealing with the death and misery unleashed by HIV (very much part of the HIV story), the animated cartoons livened up the audience — and showed that discussing HIV on television can be funny yet serious at the same time.

Producer Firdaus Kharas at TVEAP's AIDS Film Festival 2004 Producers Brent Quinn (L) and Firdaus Kharas

Earlier this month, July 2007, I showed a dozen of The Three Amigos PSAs as part of my presentation on ‘Who is afraid of Moving Images?’ at the regional communication capacity building workshop under our Saving the Planet project, held in Khao Lak, Thailand.

Our participants, all engaged in non-formal education through civil society organisations from South and Southeast Asia, had interesting things to say about The Three Amigos. In conservative Philippines that extends the Vatican’s dictates, for example, our friends can’t go very far — and it was uncertain if they could go on the air at all.

In conservative yet secular India, some of it could get on broadcast television – but not the more explicit ones. Clearly, making fun of sex, sexuality and sexual habits is a very delicate task, and such humour does not always travel across cultures.

In Thailand itself, The Three Amigos will have no problems of media and public acceptance. After all, condom use has been popularised by the well known Senator Mechai Viravaidya, better known as Mr Condom.

Read what Senator (Mr Condom) Viravaidya and actor Richard Gere said at our AIDS Film Festival 2004 in Bangkok.

As Asia grapples with an increasing incidence of HIV, countries will have to make some hard choices on confronting the epidemic. One choice is how to make the best use of tried and tested, existing public educational materials like The Three Amigos, all too willing to traverse Asia spreading their message: use condoms to stop AIDS.

Watch The Three Amigos online at their website

How to order tapes of The Three Amigos

PS: The website is careful to stress this:
“These PSA’s should be used as one component only in a comprehensive HIV/AIDS prevention programme. The PSA’s will not be appropriate in all settings and in all cultures and careful evalualtion of the appropriateness of each PSA should be made.”