Facebook for Dictators

Your weekly video 

Software tips down below. First take a look at this brilliant parody: 

Link to the Video

Irony and parody are simply best for awareness-videos - just remember the fantastic 'Oil ! - Live With-It-App' about the Shell-Pollution in the Niger Delta.

Election campaigning for a dictator like Assad? While U.S. Embargo E.O. 13582 actually prohibits every business with the Syrian government?

Well, Facebook is in good company: Most dictators of the world have strong relations with western business partners, and we should not forget the military support of around 1.3 Billion US-Dollar to Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. If that's not enough - think about these two pictures below:

Experience has shown again and again, that global companies bow to pressure from the consumers, IF those call for ethical standards (however, very often only after somewhere in Asia a textile factory has crumbled to the ground).

So yes, videos like this Facebook-Add-Parody from the 4 person strong UK-NGO The Syria Campaign make sense to me.

But HOW did they managed to make it?

Animation do-it-yourself.

'The Syria Campaign' are lucky to have a US-media animator being part of their team. That's fine. I only can recommend it to every NGO. He animated Mark Zuckerberg's Photo with Adobe After Effects - maybe the mouth was his own contribution - it's a real film insertion. Ok, that's a bit more tricky as DIY animation for beginners. But still it's interesting to take a look at both tools used in this case: Puppet-tool und lip-sync, both part of the actual CC-version of After Effects (Click on the photographs to see the tutorials)

If you want to use animations yourself - here's my recommendation, GoAnimate!
It let's you build cartoon animations on a remarkably level. A bit of basic know how is sufficient for this. For 39,-$ you get the basic plan for one month - it can be cancelled at any time. Fair enough in my eyes!