Outtake from one of the videos I produced for UNESCO The Value of Heritage.
This Video Strategy in Numbers:
Strategy Overview:
— ABOUT THE CLIENT
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) is a United Nations agency focused on the conservation of international cultural heritage. Part of the different verticals of Heritage this United Nations bureau works to safeguard includes tangible movable (i.e., artifacts), tangible immovable (i.e., sites, buildings) and intangible (i.e., skills, practices). For this project, my main point of contact was the UNESCO office in Lebanon.
— CHALLENGE
With the conflict raging on in Syria for over seven years now, the country is continuously subjected to the illegal trafficking and destruction of its heritage. UNESCO's ongoing challenge is raising awareness around the value of Syria's cultural heritage and what local and global citizens can do to halt its gradual decay.
— CONTENT SOLUTION
As a starting point, I divided my target personas into two groups. The first was citizens across the globe that are utterly desensitized to the Syrian civil war, and its impact on the country's cultural patrimony. The second was Syrian locals and global art buyers who could have a firsthand role in halting the illegal trafficking and sale of the nation's historical artifacts. Next, I produced two videos that tackled UNESCO's challenge from these complementary perspectives.
To teach people all around the world about how cultural heritage and identity are intrinsically linked, I used cognitive dissonance. I did this through a series of testimonials where I ask seven people of different nationalities to discuss their native country's heritage and how they would feel if it got destroyed. The video then transitions to a Syrian person who is currently experiencing this and builds chilling parallelism between the many speakers. Subsequently, this video was picked up by UNESCO international and adapted for global distribution.
The second video is a P.S.A. that breaks down how the trafficking of cultural goods is taking place on Syrian soil while teaching viewers how they can bring a stop to this, in a cinematic way. I worked with Belgian animation studio, Squarefish on this and we created two version of this animation (English & Arabic) to make it accessible to both Syrians and an international audience.
The Value of Heritage:
This video is like a United Colors of Benetton ad but sadder. It was quite the challenge to find immigrants with such varied nationalities in a small country like Lebanon. Once the casting was locked, all that was left to do was to put this group of people in the same room as the director and press record. Each person answered the same series of questions on camera, and when the director would find a point of interest, he would dig a little deeper until we had a complete storyline.
Save Culture, End Trafficking:
Public Service Announcements can be quite dull. My job was to deliver UNESCO's message engagingly but without falling into the clichés of Orientalism. This is why I made bloody sure that historical facts backed every single detail or location referenced in the video. Throughout the animation, we follow the narrative of an artifact called the Eye Idol which is snatched and sold on the black market. This linear storytelling helps make the broadcast more memorable to viewers.
