Tag Archives: storytelling

Helping FAO’s Local Heroes with Participatory Video

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Spectacle has been for 30+ years at the forefront of Participatory Video, supporting local communities, activists and grassroot organisations to produce their own videos. Over the last year we have helped the FAO – Food and Agriculture Agency of the United Nations collecting stories of unsung heroes facing the challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, and multiple forms of malnutrition in their communities. Our Participatory Video expertise helped local activists from all over the world produce short videos telling their stories and sharing their ideas and efforts for sustainable nutrition and climate change mitigation in their communities.

The project ‘Stories from local heroes fighting climate change, biodiversity, and malnutrition crises’ has allowed young people from Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya, Ecuador and Venezuela to be trained in using their phones as cameras, learning how to document their life and tell their stories of activism. Through a series of initial online training sessions, Spectacle helped participants develop their skills and storytelling techniques.

In tune with our ethos and practice, all participants have learned videomaking techniques and have been allowed to direct the way the stories were developed and presented, engaging them with all phases of the video production, from filming to editing.

Climate change, biodiversity and nutrition – Helping local heroes tell their stories

Spectacle facilitated a series of workshops that allowed Apollo from Kenya, Evelin from Venezuela, Dennis from Ecuador, and Dominic from Nigeria , develop, shoot their film and direct the editing of their stories. Their 4 videos will help FAO bring to the wider public the voices of those who have direct experience of the impact of climate change and inspire other local actors with ideas on how to contribute to a better and more sustainable world.

We are proud to share here the 4 videos that were the final result of the Participatory Video process.

Apollo: Helping family farmers save food in Kenya
Dennis: Going organic in Ecuador
Dominic: Regenerative agriculture and food security in Nigeria
Evelyn: Sowing satisfaction – Dorka’s family garden

We welcome any opportunity to explore collaborations with research groups, NGOs and local communities to facilitate Participatory Video projects and develop participant-led video production.

Read more about our participatory model and past projects.

How to contact Us

If you want to be trained in Participatory Video you can attend one of our Participatory Video Workshops or organise a bespoke programme for you and your organisation.

For more information or to chat about your project and ideas email us at training@spectacle.co.uk 

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Spectacle Launches New Half-Day Training Course

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Spectacle is launching a new online video training course! The Day/Night School will run half-day training courses designed for academics, researchers, journalists from all over the world!

The online classroom

Works in Any Time Zone 

Responding to demand ranging from Idaho to New Delhi, Spectacle has designed a video training course at times that work in almost any time zone, and so available to pretty much anyone around the globe – live! 

This course offers half-day training on Tuesdays and Fridays for 4 weeks – that’s 8 half-days total. The initial courses will run from 15:00-18:30 London Time, which means you can enjoy it as an early morning class in Los Angeles, or an evening class in Bangalore. Subsequent courses will shift in time for availability including Australia and Japan. 

Learn storyboarding

Designed for PhDs, Academics and Researchers

When it comes to making videos, the just ‘point and shoot’ method only works if you are extremely lucky. From inaudible audio, to interviewees that clam up as soon as they see a camera, to takes ruined by continuous autofocusing – the pitfalls are innumerable. 

This course is specifically designed for academics interested in incorporating video into their research. Whether you want to integrate visual methods into your research or produce videos to disseminate your outcomes, you will learn all you need to know to turn your research into a short film.

If you don’t have the budget for expensive filming equipment, won’t have a film crew, and need a surefire way to make a final project where the mistakes don’t distract from the message – you need our training course. Spectacle has been working with and training academics in filmmaking for decades so we know the unique needs of research filmmaking. From video techniques to editing and visual storytelling, this course will provide all the skills you’ll need. 

Camera techniques and settings

Skills You’ll Learn

The first 4 sessions are on videography, and the last 4 focus on visual storytelling and editing. You can do all 8, or just choose to do the first or second half.

  • How to operate a camera
  • How to get best results from smartphones 
  • Storyboarding and visual storytelling
  • Talking heads and interviewing  
  • Strategies from filming to editing 
  • The basics of editing using Adobe Premiere Pro
  • Learn about editing as a data analysis method 
  • How to produce engaging videos based on your findings
Learn professional standard editing in Adobe Premier Pro

In the Classroom 

All courses are taught live on Zoom. The course content is split into manageable 45-90 min modules. Each module builds on the last and will cover key concepts and offer practical exercises to develop your skills and confidence in technical and creative aspects of video making.

CONTENT 

The first 4 sessions will cover all aspects of filming, including sound recording and camera techniques. The last 4 sessions will focus on visual storytelling and editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

FLEXIBILITY

If you have to miss a session, you can access the recordings for 30 days through private links. You can choose to attend only the filming half or the editing half of the course, or buy the whole package and take a gap between the two halves. 

PRICE

£480 for 8 sessions 

£280 for 4 sessions

Previous Clients

Spectacle has delivered successful training workshops for numerous educational organisations, NGOs, and private companies including: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Anthropology Department, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Edinburgh University, Birkbeck College, UCL, LSE, Oxford COMPAS, University of Zurich, as well as hundreds of social researchers, journalists, scholars, and video marketers who have found our methods engaging and inspiring.

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NGOs – Learn to use Video!

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For NGO's video is important in storytelling and giving campaigns greater impact.

Video is important for NGOs when it comes to storytelling and giving campaigns greater impact.

Here are 5 reasons why:

1. With the rise of social media and the internet, NGO’s have never been so equipped to campaign and connect with their audiences as they are now.

2. Video is important in storytelling and can give campaigns more impact.

3. Videos can create more interest, meaning more people will support your initiatives.

4. Video can encourage sharing as people are 21 times more likely to share a video on social media than text, says a study by Hubspot. This creates further knowledge of your project and encourages new and potential supporters.

5. Campaigns which involve video are more likely to go viral – for example the ALS ice bucket challenge last summer was seen by millions.

Spectacle offer a short film making course which is designed to suit NGO’s, Charities, Start ups and SME’s.  The training is not technology specific but allows you to make use of the equipment you have available and use low budget techniques.  This is more cost effective than hiring a film crew.

We also offer an intensive 4 day course attended by NGO, charity and communications workers.

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

For information on other Spectacle training courses

Or contact training@spectacle.co.uk

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