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