Hi Morgan,
Licensing is expensive. We license a bunch of music for our work and have to put some limitations into the videos we produce to limit the cost. However! We are funded by NASA to create FREE educational videos and interactives on Earth and space for museums to use. They are all available at https://viewspace.org.
Anyone can browse around and play individual videos through the video library or, since you are an informal learning site, you can set up a free account so you can play the video collections. There is one collection that just plays content on Earth science which might be perfect for your needs. You can set it up, hit play, and it will start playing fresh content for hours, all in little one to five minute chunks! The collections are actually intended for museums to set it up as a free self-updating exhibit. We update ViewSpace content on a weekly basis to keep the science current without any need for any updating on your end. The reason for the account is just to limit individual use at home since it does cost us money to stream the content. If you want to use it just for Earth day that's fine. If you want to use it all year long, that's even better.
The biggest restriction we have is because of those licensing fees you mentioned. In our agreements to keep costs down, ViewSpace content can only be viewed through a NASA affiliated website, so it's not on YouTube and the videos cannot be downloaded. However, it's paid for through NASA, so you are free to show them to a public audience as much as you want via the collections or library.
A few more links that might be useful:
For anyone else out there, ViewSpace also has a whole set of online digital interactives that also can be setup as a free exhibit on a tablet or other screen, though that only covers space science right now.
Happy to answer questions - send me a message directly or hit up support@viewspace.org to reach our support team.
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Timothy Rhue II
Principal Informal Education Specialist
Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore MD
He/Him/His
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Original Message:
Sent: 02-27-2023 05:32 PM
From: Morgan Beam
Subject: RIghts and licenses for showing videos in educational programs
Hi all! I'm sure this has been discussed on the open forum before, but bringing it up again here: I'm looking to have an Earth Day education event at my museum, composed of several different hands-on science and art-making activities. For part of the event, I'd like to show some sort of related educational video in our Auditorium. I found a series of about ten one-minute videos on YouTube and reached out to the appropriate contact for licensing listed on their website. They quoted me $2,500 per video... again, the videos were only one minute long each and they are available on the public platform of YouTube. I felt this was pretty steep considering those factors... Anyone else have a similar experience? Is this a common thing? If so, does anyone have any recommendations for AFFORDABLE educational video offerings?
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Morgan Beam
Curator of Education
Customs House Museum & Cultural Center
Clarksville TN
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