Welcome back, Ben.
Thanks for clarifying your intent. Sorry folks misunderstood what you wanted, but it's usually best if you say right up front what kind of criticism you're looking for. Otherwise you'll get whatever criticism people feel like dishing out at the moment, whether it fits your plan or not.
Perhaps my mother could give you some helpful advice. For many years she ran the public speaking program at a university up north. She often taught the introductory public speaking classes that survey all the different kinds of ways you can speak. When they get to the persuasive speech, invariably some student would choose to argue faked Moon landings. Not that they necessarily believed it, but it was a topic they thought they could research and persuade people about, and thereby get a good grade. When my mother told them, "My son is one of the world's experts on debunking those hoax theories," they invariably changed topics. I think the message is here is "Know your audience." You registered here, posted your video, and left -- all within five minutes. Had you read through the first pages of the top five or so topics, you might have found a better way to frame your video here in order to get the response you wanted.
What I said at first about your video is still mostly what I would say now, but I would naturally temper it a bit knowing that it's a survey film and not and advocacy film. Namely, your material is about 10 years old. Given that your theme is, "People still believe these 5 things," that's not necessary a bad thing. But if that's what you're trying to say -- i.e., that this stuff keeps coming up although we should know better -- then frame the evidence that way. Make that point. A simple point-counterpoint presentation on a controversial subject still leaves people wondering why you're saying it. And yes, while this is what people were commonly saying 10 years ago, most of the prolific hoax claimants have moved on from them. So they're not really the top 5 anymore.
Before we leave the point-counterpoint notion, I think you got some good suggestions. "Many people believe..." and "some conspiracy theorists say..." are probably reasonably good introductions to the hoax claims, the personification of the other side needs work. "NASA says..." should be used only if you get the rebuttal material from NASA. NASA, by and large, does not acknowledge or respond to hoax theories. Most of your rebuttals are going to come from the private or academic sectors. So, for example, if you're going to talk about crosshairs, frame the rebuttal in words like, "Photography experts have shown how the crosshairs can fade away under ordinary circumstances." You have to show that the rebuttals have real teeth and aren't just gainsaying or denials from the people accused of perpetrating a hoax.
Toward that end also, framing rebuttals with "Believers say..." is unfair. "Believer" suggests someone who takes a conclusion on faith. That is not a fair characterization for most of the people who dispute hoax theories. In my case especially, and in the case of many others here on this forum, my conclusion that Apollo was real is based on my professional training and experience as an engineer working in aerospace -- 25 years in the field -- and a very lengthy, exhaustive program of historical research into the history of the program and its claims. It's not a pseudo-religious belief.
If you're going to get into characterizing the players on both sides of the issue that you treat, characterize them accurately: among the relevant qualified scientists, engineers, technicians, historians, etc. there is as close to unanimous acceptance of Apollo's authenticity as one can get. Your audience might want to know that. "You mean there aren't any scientists who think the Moon landings were hoaxed? Hm..."
That's the general flaw in the overly centrist approach. I know some teachers say you should give equal weight to both sides and let the audience decide. But they're generally talking about topics on which you could likely have a well-reasoned debate on both sides. Take America's new universal healthcare system -- I'm sure you could make a great summary film on the question, "Will the Affordable Care Act help or hurt the U.S. economy?" See, on that point we aren't too sure, and there are experts on both sides making informed predictions. But not so with the authenticity of Apollo. Therefore, many of us here think it's a fatal flaw to given the appearance of equal credibility to both sides of the Moon hoax question when the sides simply are not scientifically or factually equivalent at all.
You have to decide, "Should I give equal time/weight to both sides?" or "Should I weight my presentation of the evidence according to what I think the evidence itself indicates?" I've been involved with professional filmmakers making full-length documentaries using my expertise on this subject. The best one gets shown occasionally on National Geographic. The approach they took was to test hoax claims according to science, believing it likely that a scientific discussion or demonstration would refute the hoax theory. They didn't think the hoax claims were true, but at the same time they allowed the claimants to make their statements in their own words.
That's a reasonable sense of fair play. But if you pick a topic where the evidence is clearly skewed toward one outcome, and you make a purely centrist, "equal time and weight" film, it reflects badly on you. Some of your audience will wonder how good an analyst you are if you can't see that there's no legitimate controversy. They'll accuse you of making "fluff" pieces that simply aim to stir up a controversy without offering any real insight. There are, however, pitfalls also to weighting your presentation. The people on the other side will complain that you misrepresented them or that you are biased.
The specific flaw in the centrist approach is what Echnaton brings up above. Read his response carefully. Almost all conspiracy theorists at first adopt a centrist position. They say they haven't really made up their minds, or that they just have a few questions. Then over the course of several dozen pages of debate, they slowly reveal that they're quite ardent hoax believers -- they just weren't honest about it at the beginning. I can go into greater detail about this if you want. But the bottom line is that you probably honestly thought that by not explicitly taking sides, you'd convey to your critics sufficiently that you weren't advocating anything. You probably had no way of knowing that the nature of this particular debate is that if you don't explicitly say in big bold letters, "I believe we really did go to the Moon," any centrist presentation is likely to be interpreted as the "stealthy" approach to advocating a hoax.
My "How can we make progress?" comment is an expression of my frustration at having to debunk the same nonsense over and over. Sorry if that personally offended you.
