Tag Archives: Erasmus

Rectory Gardens Eviction

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Hi, I’m an intern placed by Erasmus at Spectacle. My name is Silke and I’m from Belgium and will be staying here for 3 and a half months.
On my third day of the internship we went filming in Rectory Gardens.
Tony Healy an 81 year old resident of Rectory Gardens housing cooperative of over 30 years was to be evicted out of his home by Lambeth Council.
It was a street with really old houses that had been abondened for a while.
It was not really the choice of the people to leave their houses, the Council threw them out to sell them again.
A really cruel thing to do but there was no other way I guess.

So when we arrived there were a lot of neigbours and a councillor of the green party.
We found out that Tony was not there, everybody was calling hospitals
to find where Tony was.
They informed us that he had been sectioned the night before.
To be sectioned means committing (someone) compulsorily to a psychiatric hospital in accordance with a section of a mental health act.
So they came into his home at night and took him to the mental hospital.
In the process the old man broke his hip.
Not a very nice thing to do..
The man’s house was very beautiful. He was a musician and painted a lot. All the walls in and out his house are covered in art works made by him.
Luckily there were a lot of people blocking the door. We also helped by just being there with the camera’s.
So the bailiffs were afraid to show up with so much attention pointed at them.
The council was also present but they were ignoring us and the cameras.
Spectacle has already filmed in Rectory Gardens a few years ago but we are still editing the imagery.

Spectacle is currently working on a project about Rectory Gardens.
If you want to follow our progress, click on the links below:

Spectacle homepage
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Spectacle’s training course encourages you to take the next step

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Spectacle offers several training courses in which participants can experience all the aspects of filmmaking.

Recently I  participated  in Spectacle’s  four day Digital Filmmaking training course which I did as a part of my one month work placement for Spectacle. These intense four days gave me what I was looking for – a practical skill set in filmmaking and post production. As an undergraduate Politics & Media students at Bournemouth University, the training course provided me with practical tips how to produce a short film and what I need to know beforehand which will without a doubt benefit my studies.

During the training course the other participants and I had a chance to practice all aspects of filmmaking: everyone had a go with camera, sound, interviewing and directing. A practical exercise was an interview with a local Mural artist Brian Barnes who talked about his art inspired by the Battersea Power Station. Dominique Lyons, one of the participants describes the training as ‘a good all round course on the basics’. Dominique who works in communications thinks she picked the right course for herself however our participants also came from different fields.

Pelagia Makrelli, an anthropology student from Greece, did her Erasmus workplacement for Spectacle this summer. She says the training helps ‘anthropologists to go from theory to action’. Another anthropologist participating the course was Zsuzsa Millei who says she appreciates how the course showed ‘respect for beginners enthusiasm, patience when something went wrong and understanding of clumsiness’.

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How to film an interview? Spectacle’s training course participants tested interview techniques with a mural artist Brian Barnes.

With my previous experience in editing covering the basics of how to use iMovie, the training course shed light on more advanced editing software and broadened my knowledge of different possibilities for editing. We learned how to use Final Cut Pro and we were advised which software might suit our own purposes. Now after the training course I feel a lot more confident with working with cameras and I’m looking forward to use these new skills in practice.

A freelance journalist Jessica Holland also found the training course very beneficial and she hopes to use her skills to make short documentaries. After all everyone of us who took part in the training course will use these learned skills in different ways. However I believe the course encouraged us to take the next step and get involved in film projects that we might have missed otherwise.

If you are interested in booking the course visit the How to Book page.

For information on other Spectacle training courses

Or contact training@spectacle.co.uk

If you would like more information on future training opportunities at Spectacle sign up for the Training Newsletter – tick the box if you would also like Spectacle’s general newsletter.