The video – I don’t think the youtube embeds work anymore.
My transcription:
Sarah McLachlan’s video for ‘World on Fire’ begins with her playing the guitar in a plain room.
Then the words: THIS VIDEO COST $150,000 flash on the screen…
This question follows: WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS VIDEO?
The answer: WELL, IT ONLY COST $15
The video then launches into these statements (please excuse the syntax, the delivery is different in the video)
$150,000 COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO OVER 1,000,000 PEOPLE
- on a set in LA, $200 = a production assistant for 1 day OR in Ethiopia, 100 children’s school fees for 1 term
- office phones = $480 OR equips 10 classrooms in Afghanistan
- $5,000 = cost of make-up and hair for one day OR one year’s schooling for 145 girls in Afghanistan
- on set, $500 = sound playback OR in Bangladesh, all the nuts and bolts to hold together 50 houses
- on set, $1,150 = filming equipment OR in Nepal, 5 bicycle ambulances
- $9,500 pays for meetings, tax and union fees OR in West Africa, film screenings in refugee camps, meaning education and escapism for 180,000 refugees
- $10,200 = 2 hours of film stock OR 6 wells built in 6 different countries
- $3,500 = a production supervisor OR schooling and support for 70 children of war in Sierra Leone
- in LA, catering for a one day shoot = $3,000 OR buys 10,950 meals for street children in Calcutta
- studio costs = $5,400 OR independence for 100 widows in Afghanistan
- $15,000 = camera and art department cost OR a machine to generate power for an entire rural community, meaning energy, irrigation, and business
- cost of electricians on set for one day = $2,625 OR livestock as a source of food and income for villages across the world
- $15,000 = styling costs OR in India, 1 mobile medical unit, in its lifetime, it will treat 150,000 people
- $2,500 = 1 editor OR schooling for 100 street children in Tanzania for a year
- $11,000 = all editing and post OR will run a street children’s hospital for a whole year
- $16,500 = director’s fee (+1st and 2nd AD) OR total running cost of a South African orphanage for one year
- a producer earns $7,500 OR buys 6 months of medicine for 5,000 patients in Kiberia, Kenya, East Africa’s largest slum (800,000 people living in the space of Central Park – 1 sq mile)
- the production company = $22,500 OR Kiberia gets a 12 room clinic
The video ends with the line: SO THAT IS WHERE ALL THE MONEY WENT
One more thing, at one point the video shows a woman who is a single mother in Ghana. She works 2 jobs, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week.To earn the $200 a year it costs to send her son to school, one of her jobs is to sell oranges. The oranges sell for 2 cents each. She might sell 50 oranges per day…
