Friday 3 July 2015

UK Screening of the film 'We are Teachers'


On Tuesday 30th June we held the UK screening of the film 'We are Teachers' at Mary Ward House in London. We were delighted to be able to share the film with such a broad audience made up of academics, policy makers, education specialists, PV practitioners and students. Thank you to those who came!




If you'd like to watch the film again, or share with colleagues, you can find it at the following links:


The main film with subtitles: https://vimeo.com/123427661 

Some behind-the-scenes comments from two teachers and a head-teacher: https://vimeo.com/123427662

Please remember these films are under Creative Commons Attribution so do feel free to use them for educational purposes (we'd love to know about it if you do) and always credit the makers and the organisations involved (these details appear beneath the project titles)



If you would like to know more about the ongoing collaboration between The Open University, DAPP Malawi and Catcher Media Social, please feel free to contact the Principal Investigator Dr Alison Buckler or leave a comment underneath this page.


If you would like to know more about DAPP's approach to developing 'a different kind of teacher', you can visit their website.


If you would like to know more about the practice and processes of participatory video, and how our partner Catcher Media works with other organisations their website is here.


Thanks also to The Open University's Strategic Research Investment Fund for funding the screening and reception, Mary Ward House for providing such a beautiful venue on such a glorious summer evening, and Nick Holt for the photographs.

Sunday 14 June 2015

Invitation to the UK screening of the film 'We are Teachers'

The Open University invites you to attend the UK screening of
 
“We are teachers”

A film made by teachers living and working in a rural Malawian community
 

Tuesday 30th June 2015, 6:30pm – 8pm
Film screening followed by a reception
 
The Dickens Library, Mary Ward House
5-7 Tavistock Place, London, WC1H 9SN (5 minutes’ walk from Euston Station)

 
“We are Teachers” is a short film made by a group of rural primary school teachers in Malawi. The film was made as part of a collaboration between The Open University, Catcher Media Social, the NGO Humana People to People and its local member organisation DAPP Malawi.  

The year 2015 marks the deadline of the global campaign of Education for All (EFA). At this critical moment in the international education narrative, this collaboration piloted the practice of participatory video as a research and advocacy tool. The purpose was to explore how collaborative film-making can provide a platform for incorporating rural teachers' voices in this narrative and bring their voices closer to global policy discussions around how to enhance pupil learning.
 
The event is free, but places are limited. Please contact Dr Alison Buckler alison.buckler@open.ac.uk to reserve a place.
Please promote this event through your networks.

The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales, and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).  The Open University is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

 

Thursday 16 April 2015

PV, research and data

One of the aims of the pilot study was to explore the range of data that can be derived during a participatory video process.  While I'm becoming more interested in the visual and narrative analysis that can be done on the media that PV produces, my main interest is the opportunities to engage in research through the process side of PV - something I've been talking up for a while.  It's a been a great opportunity to play with this without the pressure of a full research project and to start to learn how to engage with people's world views while working with them on a film.

No pretty pictures for this post, but based on the experience, I'd suggest this (probably non-exhaustive) list of data types and opportunities one can expect from a PV process.  The ones in italics are ones we have examples of from this pilot, although without much analysis to date.  The rest are ones I think there is potential for.

Participant observation
  • Notes on facilitation
  • Autoethnography from participants
  • Behind the scenes filming of crew discussions
  • Screening observations
  • Notes on critical decision points
  • Walkabout observation
Interviews
  • On camera, participant led interviews
  • Vox pops
  • Behind the scenes interviews
  • Parallel semi-structured interviews with individuals
  • Parallel photo-elicitation
  • Parallel self-recorded interviews
  • Peer interviews from workshop exercises
  • Recorded group reflection and discussion
Documentary analysis
  • Production documents - scripts, workplans, storyboards, interview schedules etc.
  • Briefings
Visual/narrative analysis
  • Main film - discourse analysis, thematic analysis, micro-expressions, spatial relationships
  • Training exercises - ditto
  • Photos - ditto
  • Rushes - ditto
  • BTS scenes - ditto
Two particularly interesting observations come out of the project for me, when thinking of it as a methodological pilot.

- Spatial, visual and verbal data sometimes highlighted quite different things.  For example, we started work at each of the schools with a walkabout - an opportunity for the host teachers to show the visiting teachers and ourselves around.  I took notes on what the group seemed most interested in.  At both schools there was little obvious interest in classrooms, and instead lot of attention to the schools as places to live and work the land, with some later interest in facilities and their relationship to donors and partners.  Verbal data in relation to this threw up spatial comparisons too, but much more related to teaching practice - noting how school gardens are laid out, and shopping corners inside classrooms. It could relate to the difference between observing what a group does (coarse grained), and what individuals pick up on (harder to do by pure observation).
- There was a very neat demonstration of the differences in the theory-in-practice of pedagogy at the local heuristic level, compared to external and more formal conceptions of it.  One of the key themes in the film was active learning, which our in-team educational experts related to particular mode of working with learners in class (for example, setting tasks for groups to work out rather than individualised rote learning).  Our teacher participants included this in their description of active learning, but drew the boundary much more widely to include sports, the school feeding programme, community relations, and so on.  At one stage it felt like it covered everything and was fairly naive and meaningless.  However, following it up I'd say that it's a robust conceptual structure (there's a good internal logic, and it was consistent across both schools even though they've little to do with one another), it's at the core of these teacher's practice and values, and it's much richer than the formal theoretical notion.  It seems to relate to an holistic idea of learners and creating the best environment for them to take active part in learning.  This covers things like engaging their interest and incentivising their participation in school, as well as working with the community to provide a good social context for education.  It's practical and relates directly to retention and completion.  I'm hoping to get a chance to build some cognitive maps from the interview data to be in a better position to describe it.

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Prosumer gear

As well as the tablet kit for our project in Malawi, we brought a high-end set of gear to work with and to compare in how it's used. It was basically Rick Goldsmith's core film-making kit at the moment (built around a decent camcorder) and supplemented with some of my Open University gear.  It's just possible to film solo with this setup, but that's not really the point - it allows a crew to work together to capture high quality sound and video, with a lot of control over the recording settings.


The kit, consists of:
  • Panasonic AF101
  • Lenses (a decent zoom and some fast primes)
  • Monitor
  • Tripod
  • Shotgun Mic
  • Rode windshield suspension kit
  • Headphones
  • Boom pole.
  • Projection gear
  • Large reflector
  • LED light and stand
Mac laptop set up as an edit deck with 
  • Final Cut Pro 7
  • iMovie

Although our participants needed quite a lot of hands-on support to get going with this setup, it's not quite true that it's harder to use for newcomers to film-making.  Most people can pick up an ipad and start shooting and get something straight away. But once the idea that the idea of control over the camera to get an intentional shot is introduced then it's a less straight-forward comparison.  Having a large, robust rig with more physical controls provides a good opportunity to work with things like focus, exposure and white balance, which even if they're available on smaller devices are often hidden behind touchscreen menu options.  In a sense the equipment itself motivates a more considered approach to shooting and with enthusiasm and appropriate support it can work very well for a group.  It also encourages teamworking, with space for several people collaborate in getting a shot.


The advantages:
  • It's a large, robust setup that enables collaborative film-making.  It works well with groups up to 10 or so if some are being interviewed while others are crewing.
  • The video monitor and headphones help pick up recording issues on the shoot and correct for them, while high recording quality (ie definition and codecs) keep options open in the edit.  We felt this was important for a project which is producing advocacy material for international use.
  • Setting up shots gave our group a lot of time to discuss the content of interviews and coach on and negotiate about what was going to be said next.
  • Options like different lenses, reflectors and lighting and  
  • Several of the teachers we were working with took very naturally to working with this kit, and they could easily form the nucleus of a film-making team in the future.
Issues we've run into
  • The gear is expensive and we couldn't get it insured to be loaned out in the way that the ipad based kits were.
  • Weight - moving all this kit around locally and internationally is a serious undertaking.
  • Shots take time, which means that there needs to be a lot of time available, or that production planning needs to be tight.
  • The complexity of the options available for shooting means that it takes time to get used to using.  It can also be intimidating for participatns to get going.
Conclusions
Higher end kit can have a place in participatory film-making and opens doors for creativity and finer control of outcomes.  It forces more planning and thinking through how things are going to look, but this pays off in the edit. A nice progression was getting participants interested in thinking about film-making and expressing their own ideas with the tablet based kit, and then working together as a group using this gear.  In the end a lot comes out of the particular interests of the participants themselves.

Saturday 28 March 2015

The finished film

After the amazing day of the screening in which the church at Matindi school was absolutely jam-packed with excited school-children (it must have been 200+ pupils easily), village elders and other local dignitaries, we all returned to the UK. I then spent some time putting the finishing touches to the videos e.g. polishing the sound mix (so that all the interviews were at the right level) and adjusting colour levels. I also created a subtitled version as Julia, my wife and Catcher Media Social producer, said that it wasn't always easy to understand what was being said (after I'd been in Malawi three weeks it all seemed perfectly clear to me) and made a few changes based on feedback from DAPP in Malwai.

So for your enjoyment:

The Film: https://vimeo.com/123403447

The film with subtitles: https://vimeo.com/123427661

and some behind-the-scenes comments: https://vimeo.com/123427662

Please remember these films are under Creative Commons Attribution so please credit the makers and the organisations involved:

This participatory video project is a collaboration between the Open University, Catcher Media Social, Humana People to People and its local member organisation, DAPP Malawi.

This film was made by Gaison Liwonde, Clement Meso, Luciano Mwachilira, Grace Mwakanema, Henry Joseph NG'ombe and Michael Nyondo.

With support from Dr. Alison Buckler and Dr. Chris High from THE OPEN UNIVERSITY, Rick Goldsmith from CATCHER MEDIA SOCIAL, Olga Guerrero from HUMANA PEOPLE TO PEOPLE and Gift Vasco from DAPP MALAWI.

Thursday 19 March 2015

Saying thanks and leaving things behind

After two days of wrapping up, we packed and heading for the airport on Saturday.  I must admit I've often felt fresher, and I was quite looking forward to the tedium of sitting down and watching Africa slide by underneath.  Thursday was taken up with a morning of prep and then our final workshop, where we discussed a fine cut with the group, did some interviews and then spent some time saying thank you and goodbye properly.

Letting go is an important part of group work and there're all sorts of things that I think work well. One, asking everyone to help clear up the space they've been working in, wasn't appropriate this time because the workshops were spread over three locations.  Saying good bye and thank you always seems to fit in though, and I took the opportunity to share a tradition from a video course Rick and I ran: T156 - Digital Film School, where we presented students with hero badges for contributions to the course that made it a better place to study.

With this group, we gave them all hero badges and I asked the group to suggest why for each one. It took some of the energy out of the subsequent suggestion that everyone thank everyone else for something specific, but I noticed quite a few hero badges on show the next day.

Friday was more public. I spent the morning at Nasonjo working up a pre-screening for around 150 students and staff.  There was a cheer every time someone they recognised came on the screen - not easy given the amount of light pouring in from overhead, the ad-hoc nature of the screen and the relatively dim battery powered projector. Afterwards there was time to sit and talk to the teachers at the school I hadn't been working with.  They were really sweet and kind and interesting, poking gentle fun at me and each other, and happy to share the spicy potato cakes I'd bought at the Indian shop in town on the way out.

Eventually the car came and found us and we piled out at the main event where chaos was being shaped in to order and I managed to avoid being part of the stage party, something I always try and avoid on account of being too fidgety to be on show.  The screening was preceded by full pomp, with speeches, introductions and dancing beforehand and more speeches and presentations afterwards.  The dancers were brilliant, and I especially liked the girl guides team, who hung on to their spot in the limelight so tightly it looked like they might need to be carried off at one stage, and the Nkosi Zulu style dancing which had more and more people up and kicking up dust, including Rick and I.

The screening itself hovered on the edge of disaster (and had long before I even got there), using up three projectors and most of Rick's nerves.  The sound crew were local lads who revelled in the opportunity to fill the church hall with their kind of music, once they'd successfully evaded the H&S risks associated with 'plugging' in bare wires into a socket.  Rick had spent the morning doing a sound mix on the video so that it could be played out on speakers the size of small trucks, but in the end the audience were even louder, cheering every time someone from their school appeared on screen and loudest of all for their headmaster.


The important parts of the day for me where the opportunity for our teachers to get recognition for their work from their own community, and to leave behind everything we could so that there'd be something more than memories and questions afterwards.  I spent most of Thursday evening putting together a set of the photos and some of the video on a memory stick for each school, and we left a small flip-style camera behind for each school on permanent loan.  I'm really interested to see whether they use them and what for when we come back sometime.

Friday 13 March 2015

Sneak preview

It's late and there's been a lot of editing for the last few days in the run up to our premiere tomorrow at Matindi school (there'll be photos from that, I'm sure).  In the meantime, here's a preview of some of the material which fed into our title sequence.

Thursday 12 March 2015

What's in your classroom?

Last Friday we were clearing up after the workshop. We walked around the room collecting the empty plastic water bottles and set off towards the bins. Grace, one of the DAPP teachers working on the film, rushed over and asked if she could take the bottles instead. We asked why, and she reeled off five different ways in which she could use them as teaching and learning resources in her classroom.

Resources are central to two fields that I work in. Practically, resources (or lack of) are prominent in the literature on teaching in low-come contexts. When you read about rural and remote schools in particular, or speak to teachers who work there, a lack of paper, pencils, chalk and visual aids are a key issue (not to mention a lack of more substantial things that make teaching easier, like desks, benches, black-boards, electricity… classrooms…).




Conceptually, much of my work has drawn on Amartya Sen’s capability approach. Central to this is an evaluation of the freedom an individual has to pursue and achieve objectives (or capabilities) which they have reason to value. In international development (and more recently, education), a focus on capabilities has been positioned as an alternative to approaches which strive for equality in utilitarian terms (i.e. everyone having the same resources). In his book Inequality Reexamined, Sen asked: equality of what? Sen agrees that resources are important. However, the value isn't in the resource itself, but the freedom a person has to utilise that resource to achieve an end goal.



The obvious example is money. Say you have (since we’re in Malawi) two 1000 Kwacha notes (1000 Kwacha is worth about £1.50). You give one to a person living in a city and one to a person living in a remote, rural hamlet. Financially, each note has equal value, but their opportunity to convert the note into valuable outcomes is less equal. The city person could walk to the bank and pay it into an account where it would gain interest, or they could treat a friend to a coffee at a hotel, or they could by anti-malarial drugs at a clinic, or spend it on fruit at a supermarket… etc. The rural person has different freedoms to utilise the note. In some ways this freedom could be limited (for example it might cost 1000 Kwacha to get to a bank in the first place) but in others it may be expanded (they might be able to get a lot more fruit for 1000 Kwacha at a local market than the city person could in a supermarket, or they might be able to invest it in a farming cooperative). So, whether the end goal is something tangible like a mango, or a more abstract goal like good health, different people have different capabilities to pursue these, even if they have the same level of ‘resource’. All this is before you factor in things like age, gender, existing income, personal contacts, family expectations, cultural norms and expectations and so on.

So, bringing the practical and the conceptual together… resources are important in teaching, but we also know of countless projects which have donated books, computers, generators, etc to schools and had no discernible impact on the learning outcomes of the pupils. Resources are important, but they need to be contextualised, appropriate and meaningful for both teachers and pupils if they are to enhance teachers’ freedoms to ensure their pupils learn.

All this is a long-winded way of introducing the TALULAR Rooms at the two DAPP teacher colleges we've visited - Chilongoma and Amalika. TALULAR means Teaching and Learning Using Locally Available Resources. The rooms are incredible spaces, categorised by subject, and full-to-bursting of teaching aids, all made by the students from every-day items - many of which would normally be seen as rubbish and thrown away.




Our favourites included a very simple counter in which bottle caps were strung onto a bow-like frame made of wood and string, and a working model of the respiratory system made from a large plastic water bottle, balloons, a biro, some clay, and a plastic bag.

The students proudly showed us all of the things they’d made and collected for the resource room, and talked passionately about the importance of them in their teaching. They talked about how important it was for pupils to 'see' how lungs (the balloons) inflate when we breathe in and they fill up with air, rather than just be told about it, and how basic sums become much easier when a child has a counter. They also talked about how much more fun school is for children when they can play musical instruments (they had shakers made from food cans full of beans or rice, tambourines made from plastic bottles and bottle caps and drums made from cardboard boxes and animal skins) and how classrooms are more stimulating and attractive learning environments when there are wall charts and posters.

I've spoken to a lot of student teachers in my work, and none of these assertions are uncommon. Nearly all of the 300 student teachers I surveyed in Ghana recently said that more and better resources would improve their teaching. What is less common is student teachers having innovative, but also very practical ideas about how they can create these from every-day items (in capability terms, this can be seen as the freedom to convert a resource into an outcome). This is a central element of the DAPP approach.

It is very unlikely that schools in low-income contexts - and especially rural ones - are going to get significantly increased budgets for teaching resources any time soon. But one way of enhancing the learning experience for children in these contexts is to have more teachers like Grace who - at the end of a long week of teaching and filming workshops - see an empty plastic bottle and don't think 'rubbish', but think:

1) stock for my classroom 'shop'
2) musical instrument
3) vessel for teaching volumes of liquid
4) the children could use them to make cars in an expressive arts lesson
5) the label can help with reading.

It's really crucial that teacher preparation programmes support teachers to develop these capabilities - to convert resources that are available to almost everyone into appropriate, useful, attractive and fun teaching aids to support better quality teaching in rural classrooms.

P.S. You can see some really great examples of these in the film!


Tuesday 10 March 2015

Last day of Filming?

Considering we're only here for such a short time, it's certainly impressive that we've managed to pack in over six days of filming, between workshops and school visits. Today was the last day of filming at Nasonjo school, and that leaves only two days before the group gathers again for the editing workshop, and only three days before the screening! I'll be producing an assembly/first cut edit for the group based on the planning we did at the last workshop, and then the group will review the edit on Thursday, with changes and a few finishing touches to be done for Friday's screening.

Time is really a huge factor in this project. Every day there have been new things to discuss, both in terms of content (every interview question leads to discussion, and the interview rehearsal often sparks more thoughts), but also in terms of film-making (technically and aesthetically). The great thing is that the group have been so open, and there has been a real sense of sharing knowledge for all of us, all fuelled by the enthusiasm and energy of the staff from the two schools.















Sunday 8 March 2015

Malarone is my friend

One of the seldom written up arts of fieldwork is that of staying well in a different environment.  I've had a few more opportunities to travel with people who're really experienced fieldworkers in the last year or so, and it's been really interesting to compare notes on what works and what to take with you.  Over the years I've developed my own preferences, but the real basics are something to patch up and disinfect breaks in the skin (currently iodine though I'm quite fond of a nail varnish like product called Germoline new skin) and something to deal with the inevitable dodgy stomach (charcoal and water unless it's really bad).

On top of that all I'd nonimate my good friend - Malarone.  I don't have a malaria story of my own, thankfully, but I'm really glad that we've left the delights of chloroquine (rotted my belly) and Lariam (somewhat exhausting dreams) behind and now have something that works everywhere I've been recently and simply involves one pill a day that has no side effects I've ever experienced other than preventing malaria.


Some other things I've found useful over the years:

Sun cream
Paracetomol
Puritab water treatment
Tiger balm
Mosquito repellent
Sterile set (never had to use this thankfully)

Probably the most useful thing is to learn to pace yourself.  We're working six long-ish days a week and while the climate is being very kind to us and we have a great place to stay it still adds up.  So probably my best friend of all is my day off, and I'm off to relax.

The script converges


It's been a bit busy with filming, so there hasn't been much time to post this week.  We've made a lot of progress though, and finished with a longer workshop yesterday where we checked through all the material that has been shot with the group and checked back against the script ideas from last week.

It was really encouraging to see the wealth of stories coming through and that the interviews and the cutaways would really reinforce one another.  For me personally some of the most interesting moments were where the boundaries between ideas in the practice of the teachers we were working with didn't match our own.

A good example of this is the notion of 'active learning'.  At one stage I counted what seemed like three different things to us which were all being linked to active learning: (i) the pedagogical practice of involving children in investigation and group work to make learning more effective, (ii) building in physical activity to the school days to increase concentration during class-room time, and (iii) running a full extracurricular programme (such as sports and community days), which draw students in by offering them fun and excitement. This could be re-wrapped up academically by talking about child-centred learning and affect, but the challenge is drawing out the deeper working theories that our teacher participants work by in ways that come across to our international audience.

On to the edit....

Wednesday 4 March 2015

Mobile kit review

We've been quite interested to see what mobiles and tablets give in terms of workflow, in field conditions.  Rick Goldsmith of Catcher Media has been using ipads in workshops for some time now, and he's built up a nice set of accessories that bridge the gap between a handheld ipad and something a group can work with and hope to get good sound.  This kit was based on what he's learned so far.


The basic kit, consists of:
  • iPad
  • A USB mic
  • Cables: lightning-USB converter, USB cable, USB extension
  • A Joy Factory Unite tripod mount
  • Lightweight tripod
  • Headphones
  • Boom pole.
Apps on the ipads:
  • iMovie
  • Pinnacle Studio
  • Videon

The mic allows for direct monitoring with headphones, and can be mounted on a boom pole for 2 person operation. This gives a lot of flexibility as one can move from a handheld solo ipad to a set up that works reasonably well for interviews.  We didn't buy a specific tripod and boom pole for this project, but the lightweight one here is fine (from my DSLR travel kit).  A lighter boom pole would have been quite feasible, and would have given a nicely portable overall weight of kit.  An alternative to the tripod and tripod mount would be some kind of clamp, which would again cut down on weight and size by replacing the tripod with door frames, chairs or whatever else offers a stable edge to clamp on to.

In terms of apps, we have a number loaded on, but these three are the key ones we've used so far. iMovie is very intuitive, but the Pinnacle app adds a few more features (separating out sound tracks, for example) which give a little more scope without being hard to use.  Videon offers more creative control and even some simple editing facilities like splitting clips and colour correction.


The advantages:

  • Ease of use - shooting and editing both take very little time to introduce, even with a group who're not really familiar with technology interfaces and controls.  We were really struck on this project with how quickly participants took to editing.
  • Can monitor sound (the mic has a headphone socket) and image (the screen is a nice size to see the shots).
  • Can shoot, edit and review on the same device.  It can also play out to a projector, or files can be shared between ipads or transferred to laptops for further editing (more on this separately).
  • There was a lot of interest in the ipads from participants, and request to have extra time playing with them, which we regard as a very healthy sign.
  • They work for small group work (3-4) people.  We've used them for interview practice and small two shot dramas. These play to the strengths of the device without making difficulties 
Issues we've run into
  • The lightning to USB connection comes loose a little too easily for comfort.
  • Reflections obscuring the image on screen while filming outdoors
  • The clamp can be a bit fiddly to fit on the the ipad so as to leave the lightning port free.  Rick had to drill a hole in it to be able to use an ipad mini camera as otherwise this would be covered over.
  • The controls in the basic camera app are quite primitive, and it 's very easy to get mixed up between shooting modes and record photos rather than video clips (for example).
Overall we think there's a lot to be said for this set up for building up skills.  It's not quite as satisfying for group work or for introducing video controls as camcorder based setups, but that might just be the way we're used to working.

I'm going to post this any any kit reviews on a separate blog as well - http://pvkit.blogspot.com/, which I'd like to keep going beyond this project.  It'd be great if any other PV practioners out there would like to share what they've found too.  Leave a comment on the blog or email me if you'd like to be invited to be a contributor.

Tuesday 3 March 2015

iPad film-making and "Making a film"

Been thinking this morning about the challenges the group face when using iPads to make a film. We've been thinking that this project would be a really good way to test out the strengths and some of the pitfalls of using this kit out in the field in order to create a film.

Some exciting things: its so easy to get some material filmed, and with a few extra bits of kit, relatively easy to get good quality sound and image.

It's also great that people can use the camera controls and the editing software so quickly (and you've got to remember I remember the days of dust on the tape and drop out, cables not working, the hours spent trying to get material into the edit interface, and the hours introducing groups to an editing interface - not minutes) but now it's just there!

The ability for groups to share media and even their edit projects is very exciting and something we're keen to explore within the project - the way that groups could edit separate scenes of an agreed script/outline plan and bring them together or even work on a single edit like video consequences - by passing the material back and forth between different iPads.

There's also the possibility of tagging or making notes on the material so when it's transferred to a computer for a final edit these notes can be consulted. 

Some challenges: thinking about this - it somehow feels a little harder to create a considered approach within this - yes it does rely on the work you do around this before filming, but there is such a temptation to just shoot and shoot and shoot.

The general robustness is an issue too - could they survive a drop? The screens can get grubby (making operations difficult) and in the sunlight here in Malawi those large reflective screens can be a real challenge to view (draping a black sheet over the opertaor and screen will help but you may feel like a Victorian location photographer - v. cutting edge not!) and the connecting cables are not high grade either so can damage or come loose very easily.

The free editing software is very limited too - iMovie is great but it can be quite rigid - there are a few workarounds but Pinnacle Studio (not free £8.99) functions more like an edit interface and there's definitely more scope to fine-tune the edit. This may sound like a film-maker's gripe but a group last Saturday straight away wanted to do certain things e.g. bring in audio at a specific point, and iMovie doesn't always make that as easy as it should be.

Also care must be taken when downloading apps - some may promise a little more than they deliver or may crash your iPad. So testing is crucial.

STRUCTURE: This morning also been thinking about possible structures, and directions the film might take i.e. it's message/s, after the workshops and all of the discussions my team and the group have been having, and after I spent yesterday looking at all of the notes as well, and talking about next steps for the workshops last night with Chris.

We need to bear in mind so many things and check these all the time  - potential audiences and how they may perceive and find the film challenging/helpful; expectations (the schools want the films to show off their schools and it certainly will and so it should - as they're great schools, but they're not promos - they're about exploring how these dynamic and resilient schools and teachers work). And as always there's TIME (drum roll) and that simple fact that we have a very limited timescale (next Friday we are having a screening of some of the material!) in which to construct a film rather than just a sequence of interviews.

So: themes of Motivation, How the school and teachers encourage, support and teach themselves and their pupils, and How outward-facing schools can co-opt/ work with the community and other agencies.

Mmmmm: thinking of chapters now (and TIME!!!!) and even a 10 TIPS for a successful school/teacher like Grace's successful pupil or her bottle collecting.

The rest I'll mull on - do some more back-brain thinking.

Mixing it up: Exercises and games

Saturday was scripting day.  But we started off gently with some storyboards, pitching and filming of some kit films - making a 2 shot advertisement about a piece of equipment.  It's an old standard, but in this case there was some confusion as we'd introduced the idea the evening before in a rush to set up the idea before the closing time of the workshop. Everything was shot and edited on the ipads, which proved themselves in this context at least.

We also ran some group interviews, and a wander around the garden at the lodge where we were holding the workshops to try and spot shots and sounds and ideas that would show what the place is like.

All of this made building a script easier.  In group work I find that with harder things like make collective sense of a script it pays to talk and then do something else and then talk and then something else and then come back to it.  It's like breathing - not a choice between in or out, either/or, but rather both, in good proportion.

Monday 2 March 2015

Filming Begins at Matandi

Filming started in earnest at Matandi school today. We planned to do some preliminary filming with each teacher group in their own school before they come back together on Thursday of this week. The head-teacher Clement Meso and his colleague Luciano Mwachilipa had a long list of filming they wanted to achieve in the session so we started straight away filming the head-teacher in his office. This went well but Luciano soon came to realise that his packed schedule may have been too ambitious, so we decided to move the main interviews to the Friday - this is much better as there needs to be some proper discussion and further exploration around the interviews questions and how they fit into the overall scheme of the film. Grace, the other project participant couldn't make the filming due to family commitments, and the head-teacher had delayed leaving for a meeting until his filming was done, which left Luciano and I to continue.




We shared roles - sometimes Luciano was the camera operator/director and other times he was the sound recordist/director, and I would take the other role. We filmed lots of aspects of school life including the school feeding programme with Mary's Meals and the canteen, the bore hole (including impromptu interview) and some GVs of school life. That may not sound much but when there are the logistics of heat and sunlight (which made seeing the flip-out screen and getting the correct exposure difficult), a trainee film-maker needing guidance and a large and curious group of children who gathered at whichever point we stopped to film - I think we did well.

I was really chuffed when Luciano said how much he'd learned - especially the time it takes to film (for three hours we didn't sit down) and how much he'd enjoyed the day ("now I see why you say using the camera is fun") and the care he took to set up the shots - he said he thought I was a "great teacher" which is always good to hear.

The school was left with an iPad film-making kit too in order to carry on filming - a tripod, special iPad iOgrapher holder and a USB microphone - but I told Luciano he shouldn't fell under pressure. I'm interested to see what comes out when we meet on Thursday.

Rick

Sunday 1 March 2015

Labour Pains

Saturday was a great day. I was reminded how much this participatory film-making process is a creative process, and as such can take awhile to take form, and you can't be sure exactly where people's energies will lead the fledgling film. But I guess that's one of the exciting dynamics of the process - at it's best it really does feel like a shared journey and shared learning. On Saturday afternoon in the grounds of the Legacy Lodge, where we've been running the workshops, the film first made an appearance in the world and began to take shape in the minds of the participants and on the flipchart sheets - in the form of ideas or themes, visual motifs and other elements. Click on the flipchart images to see some of the ideas.













The first two days of workshops had been incredibly intense and hectic for all five members of the team (Alison, Olga, Gift, Chris and I) but I was trying not to get too overwhelmed by just being in Africa (everyone else on the team are quite seasoned travellers) and trying to get all of the workshop plan organised alongside juggling lots of kit. We're using smartphones, iPads, camcorders and a professional camera.

We'd run a whole selection of exercises (As some of the other posts have described) to help familiarise people with the kit, aspects of film grammar, to bond as a group, build a rapport with us, and most importantly to begin to think about what makes what they do as teachers in Malawi, special and worthy of sharing.

There's so much to say about these three days but I think for now I'll just post some pics and head to bed. Filming early at  the first school.

Saturday 28 February 2015

The turning point in workshops

It's often the same in workshops - everyone starts off a little unclear what's going on, whether it will all work out, and often a little lost about how anything will be achieved...and that's just the people organising it.  Even when you know that things will change, all sorts of feelings come up and it's important to return to the basics - trust emergence, every group contains skills and ideas and just needs to find how to express them,...a film will be born at some point.


In the mean time, The key in my experience is giving breathing room.  I think it's a mistake to rush in too fast and try and solve whether everyone has a common vision for how things will work out.  The joy of workshops is that you can respond to things as they come up, and in doing start to build the kind of trust out of which participation becomes possible. Mixing up different experiences, stopping one strand of work to build up another and then returning to consolidate and combine things - it really works, especially if you can keep up an honest conversation with participants which recognises some of the things they would like to say or feel that it's legitimate to feel.



So we've worked hard for three days now.  A lot of that work has been playing and learning, and Rick and I were up front that it would be confusing at times.  The pay-off comes at least three times - first during the feedback on particular sessions, secondly when ideas start to coalesce and a rich script emerges, and finally when I can relax and let a group simply get on with it because I'd be in the way.  Sitting back in the shade is always richly rewarding, because it mean things are going well and a film is on it's way.