Participatory Video Training

The first i4d Film Festival held on 3rd August 2007. The film festival was an enormous success, bringing together over 20 films on a single day. The film makers ranged students from a local school in Uttar Pradesh, India to street children from the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The second film festival was held along with GK3 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 9th and 10th of December 2007. The event was supported by GeSCI and IDRC. The film festivals, a part of the larger Community Media initiative of CSDMS. Along with the screening of over 30 excellent films, it also hosted the first capacity building effort – Participatory Video Training – of this initiative.

Profile of trainers

The capacity building session on participatory video had 22 participants. The trainers – Denis Jaromil Rojo and Rana Ghose were supported by IDRC. Denis Jaromil Rojo is the author of various free software applications (GNU/Linux/BSD), known artist in the emerging fields of net-art and software-art, as well as activist for various social concerns and radical way of life.In order to make this session effective and sustainable in terms of skills being applied in the future, participants were asked to bring a laptop each and a device capable of capturing video (i.e; a MiniDV camera or a digital still camera capable of capturing video).

Objectives

The objectives of the training seminar were as follows:

• To provide participants with a one day intensive training session of how to shoot, script, and edit a story using digital video as the medium.
• The one-day session aimed to facilitate a process whereby participants would be able to capture video from the device onto their computers and edit the footage into a short two-minute piece, scripted and storyboarded by participants, by the end of the day.
• To apply these skills via shooting and editing a scripted story based on GK3; over the three days of the conference.
• After the one-day intensive session, participants were expected to shoot and edit a three-minute piece on a theme of their choice over the course of GK3. A space was provided in the GK3 venue, the Interactivity Support Desk, to allow participants to drop in and edit their content on either their own laptops or the six laptops that were provided to all GK3 participants.

Outcomes

While there were more participants than initially expected (22 in total), and those participants were all capable of creating their own content as per the programme of the first day (December 10), the main challenge faced by the trainers was ensuring that participants undertook the three day applied component at GK3 (December 11-13) despite the busy nature of the GK3 programme.

Future plans

The film festival will evolve into a comprehensive Community Multimedia Initiative. Through our online and offline activities we are hoping to expand the reaches of our festival. We hope to see a wider participation in the coming events. i4d magazine is going to publish theoretical content on the progress and application of citizen's media across the globe.

The next film festival is going to held along with the annual ICT4D event of CSDMS – eINDIA2008. We are also developing a portal which will act as the knowledge base for all community. Content from our magazines, festivals and blogs and news items will constitute this portal.

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