Grants:IdeaLab/Promotion Of Punjabi Wikipedia On Social Media/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2017-18 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:IdeaLab/Promotion Of Punjabi Wikipedia On Social Media.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Punjabi Wikipedia Tales - A Trip to Lahore

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Punjabi Wikipedia Tales - A Trip To Lahore!

I first came to know about the project when I attended train the trainer workshop organized by CIS-A2K in Mysore in January 2018 during the session of New Reader’s program presented by Satdeep Gill, WMF. During the video we saw how promotional advertisements were made for the awareness of Wikipedia and promote it among the masses. That was something, a small Wiki community like ours needed.

In India, generally people know a little about English Wikipedia but no one knows the value or existence of amazing online repository of rich content available on Punjabi encyclopedia built by volunteers. In order to make them aware, it was crucial we created awareness campaigns before doing direct outreach to let people know about its existence steadily and build their trust in the Punjabi Wikipedia where they could gain credible information accessible easily.

One of the monumental symbolizing of this movie is the gesture of friendship from Indian Punjab to Pakistan Punjab. Once a part of united Punjab, Lahore represented one of the powerful segments of the old times. In the current era, Punjab region of India and Pakistan has two separate Wikipedias for Punjabi language: Gurmukhi Punjabi and Shahmukhi Wikipedia. This movie is promotion of both language Wikipedias in the respective countries.

Our vision of sending animals from the school visiting the landmarks of historical importance in Lahore to learn about their heritage using Punjabi Wikipedia represents both Gurmukhi Punjabi and Shahmukhi Punjabi Wikipedia in both Indian and Pakistani Punjab.

The metrics and the outreach has been amazing. We ended up adding two variations of background music, one was Disney style and another with Indian music reflecting every landmark mentioned in the movie. In addition to the Punjabi dubbed version, we also created an English dubbed version along with the subbed version, so non-Punjabi speaking people all around the globe could watch and understand the video and know about Wikipedia and many languages it is in. Apart from these two versions, third version is the voiceless version that could be used to dub the video in other languages as well.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Ex-plainer video	Animated movie	The funds applied for low budget ex-plainer video which is of poor quality graphics just showing how certain things are done, but what instead has been created is a high end animated movie which took the awareness campaign about Punjabi Wikipedia to a whole new level.
10,000 views	190,000 views (still going on)	The exceptional video went viral on its own and we were able to get very good response in the masses for the awareness campaign in low-cost Facebook Adverts
20% increase in Traffic	357% increase in Traffic	People visiting the Main page increased from daily average of 660 visitors to 3017 visitors average after the release of video. And over 171,000 people have visited pa.wikipedia.org Main Page since 16th August,2018 - the release date of video

Metrics Links

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

The idea about promotion of Wikimedia project using something such as animation movie rather than 3D motion graphics feature turned out to the best thing we could have done. This way, we could take the protagonists/characters to places where we might not be able to visit/shoot in real life and also the cost of traveling to those places for shooting itself would have added a great expense to the project.
Other than that, Facebook adverts have been best for reaching Punjabi people, since Facebook is more commonly used medium, we completed the animation promotion that fit well with the budget of the campaigning.

What did not work so well?

I ended up drafting grant for 2D explainer video that had very less budget. So the funding I had was very small for the animation movie which is something that requires a very big budget.
Secondly, it took me around couple months to select the animator that was talented and experienced yet was willing to work for a small budget for Wikipedia Project. The animation companies asked for the script first, which was something I couldn't draft until I knew I could actually hire an animator who could work on such a complicated storyboard in low budget. If I couldn't find the right animator, then I would have drafted a simple storyboard that a less experienced animator could do in less cost.
The video script was kept small. We dubbed it till 2 minutes of time but it ended up in becoming 4 minute feature movie that created issue about finance with the animator as their quote is by the animation video time and complexity.
Small budget created problems at every turn, and I bargained using WMF brand and the cause of free knowledge for this purpose which worked well. I feel the artists involved with the project were not reimbursed as per their labor and time.
One of the other problems faced was the international money transfer. It became a challenge for us, once we found out that Banks in India do not allow International Transfer without a corporate account and all the money transfer services, such as, Western Union, Ria Money Transfer Services allowed only incoming funds. In the end, with multiple visits to different banks and money transfer services, we found out State Bank of India allows International Money Transfer, which we used to process the payment.

What would you do differently next time?

Apply for bigger funding for technical project such as this. The amount of time spent and stress that goes with managing large budget projects to be implemented in rather low cost does not bode well on the organizer who holds the ownership of the project. Chances of failing and getting the project getting messed are really high.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on. The total money I received in the bank account was 70,500 INR


Activity	Funds
Animator Fees	46,000 INR
Dubbing and Music	10,000 INR
Transportation	3500 INR
Dubbing Artist	1000 INR
Facebook Promotion	10,000 INR
Total	70,500 INR

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Idea:

The whole idea of the Wikipedia awareness campaign was to spread awareness about Punjabi Wikipedia in Punjab region and outside among Punjabi speaking people. Hindi Wikipedia and Nigeria User Group already had launched Wikipedia Awareness video in 3d Motion graphics. The animation video was was something I thought of doing to illustrate how Wikipedia can be accessed on mobile phone as most of the Indian people prefer using mobile for browsing. During the process, it developed into the idea of school students visiting Lahore, Punjab and learning about the history of landmarks on Wikipedia from mobile phone. Also, in order to be project manager of such technical project, it is advisable to have prior professional experience in the field. My expertise as Project Manager, Copywriter and Digital Marketing helped immensely in the success of this project.

Cast:


Cast	Name
Animator	Tereza Aleksanyan
Director	Rupika Sharma
Voice Artists	Stalinjeet Brar, Gurlal Maan, Rupika Sharma, Gagagndeep Dass
Script Writer	Rupika Sharma
Indian Music	Devil Studios
Indian Folk Instruments	Harsimran Singh Thind

How It Happened - WORKFLOW

Step 1:

Creation of Review Team:

Nitesh Gill, Stalinjeet Brar,Satpal Dandiwal,Gaurav Jhammat, and Manavpreet Kaur volunteered to review the story of the script on village pump.

Step 2:

Script writing

I created a script and after community review process, 3 scripts were made and several ideas were discussed but at the end, 7th idea won, where animated animals visit outside India to Pakistani Punjab.

Script writing time: 35 hours for writing, editing and community meetings, Duration - 2 weeks

Step 3:

Animator hunt

Online Platforms
Mailing list
Social media groups
Word of the mouth

After 20 interviews, numerous conversations about project requirements, trial graphics and animation with the shortlisted candidates for the project requirements, budget bargaining, Tereza Alaksanyan was selected for the video.

Time taken for the search, discuss project and review samples: 78 hours, Duration - 1.5 month

Step 4:

Legal Documents:

The legal documents were aligned with the OTRS Commons Policy and verified by veteran Wikimedian, Tanveer Hassan and the animator signed off all the rights of the video, including all the graphics, music and illustrations. Timeline - 3 hours, Duration - 3 days

Step 5:

Character Graphics:

Animator created the characters according to the references provided and after reviewing & recreating the animation characters 7 times in a row, we finalized the character illustrations of the animation. The characters chosen by me were an inspiration from real-life mascots from Wikimedia Cuteness Association from Punjabi Wikimedians UG. Time taken - 3 hours Duration - 10 days

Step 6:

Monument Graphics:

The animator sent different variations of the Monuments at different intervals that was revised and worked over again. Time taken - 9 hours Duration - 2 weeks

Step 7:

Storyboard

After the characters and visuals, the storyboard was presented and necessary changes and additions were suggested. Storyboard basically depicts how the storyline would go along with the timeline. Time taken for reviewing, editing and communication - 12 hours, Duration - 2 weeks

Step 8:

Hiring process of Studio for recording and music production

Professional services of Recording studios are expensive. So, it was challenging to hire a decent studio in limited prices. Timeline - 5 Hours ( Searching various Music Studios by word of mouth and browsing, calling different studios of Punjab and asking about the services and costs), Duration - 2 Weeks

Traveling to and fro Music Studio - 7 hours

Step 9:

Finalizing Dailogues

Step 10:

Dubbing

Along with 3 Wikimedians, Stalin and Gurlal, Rahul Sharma and a voice artist, the dubbing of video was done in Punjabi and English language. Timeline for recording - 10 hours Duration

Step 11:

Music 1 for Wikimania

Although, the animation was not complete, I went to the music studio with the incomplete animation and we created the music for the video with Punjabi touch in order for us to present at Wikimania "Inspire Campaign Session". Time taken - 6 hours

Step 12:

Music 2

When the final animation was complete, a second visit was made to music studio and another version of Indian music was developed for the animation movie. Time taken - 6 hours

Step 13:

Syncing

Next was the process of syncing and reshaping some scenes that were still not correct. Time taken - 8 hours

Step 14:

Promotion

After uploading the video on YouTube, Wikimedia Commons and Facebook, I decided to do promotion on Facebook. It is the platform that is the most popular in India and people of all age groups are highly active on it and is easy to use this platform for reaching people and making them aware about Punjabi Wikipedia. Time taken - 4 hours Duration - 1 month

Discussions, meetings with animator, reviewing tasks, writing emails and other miscellaneous tasks - 45 hours

Project Metrics:

Waiting for the end

Hours Spent On the Project:

274 hours/ 4 months

Hurdles:

The most difficult part of the entire project was limited funding. The initial idea was to create a 2D explainer video that explained about Wikipedia which we turned into animation movie. It was then, I started looking for the animators who could create a short 1-2 minute animation feature of good quality. But the process of hiring animator, music studio, and other logistics was far difficult to manage than handing it over to a professional company who could have managed everything for a good fee. Good animators wanted something along the lines of $5000 which was way out of our budget. In the end, 4 months of persistent work resulted in the production of this video.Pageviews on Mainpage of Punjabi Wikipedia from 16 August - 31 August, 2018 after release of the animation movie