11 June 2010
Technological innovation is taking place at a breathtaking pace all over the world. Interactive and attractive videos continuously emerge and help enhance the ways we create and publish information and the way we communicate and share resources to all class of people without any language or ethical barriers.
Videos are considered one of the most power tool and best methods for communicating and teaching. The fact is that, it’s much easier to consume visual image than to read something. The visual impact created by videos can often be creatively used to reach out and capture the imagination of a wide audience.
In line with this great attributes and qualities of videos, The Ghana Information Network for Knowledge Sharing (GINKS) and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD) finds video an important tool for communication to a wide range of people. IICD and GINKS jointly organized a one day video shooting and editing training on 27th May 2010 to educate and build capacity of GINKS network members in Accra as part of its Knowledge Sharing activity in Ghana.
The training saw a massive attendance, comprising largely of GINKS network members mostly drawn from the Ministries, Civil Service and private sector Organizations, NGO’s, Students, Teachers as well as ICT experts, software developers etc.
The facilitator, Martine Koopman, Officer Knowledge Sharing (IICD) said the training is to usher members and equip them in the techniques of video shooting and editing to help them improve on their works in their organizations. She urged participants to try as much as possible to impact the knowledge to others to promote development.
This training, another achievement in GINKS contribution to community development, opened with self introduction of the various participants and what their expectations are and how they will use the skills acquires after the training. Most participants said that the training came at the right time as they don’t know how to edit bulk videos they have taken and loaded onto their computers.
Martine said even though the training is to introduce members to the field of video shooting and editing, she hopes participants will dive dipper into this field in the near future. This is the words of Martine “At the end of the day everyone is able to make a simple scenario, film this, edit this and show this to others”
Martine broke the training into the following categories:
• Introduction and Icebreaker
• Scenario writing
• Exercise: Scenario writing
• Exercise: Video shooting
• Uploading and Conversion
• Windows Movie Maker Basics
• Exercise: Video Editing
• Monitoring & Evaluation
Speaking on web-based videos, Martine encouraged members to minimize the length of videos meant for website upload and application such as Youtube to 3 minutes. She said long minute videos/movies do not download faster and most often boring to watch. She mentioned Youtube as a free source of uploading videos for public consumption. She said every video is meant to tell a story and so participants must consider during scenario development and writing before shooting starts.
Martine previewed example of a short video on SEND Foundation to participants to help them better understand the concept of movie making. She said similar application can be done with images or pictures but with musical background.
Martine elaborated on some key ingredient especially when shooting interview scenes. She said there should be constant eye contact of the interviewer towards the camera and the shot must most often be close-up or extreme close to lay emphasis on the facial expression and the message of the interviewer.
Martine went on to deliberate on Scenario Making, describing it as very important step in the video making process.
Scenario Making
She defines Scenario as sequence of what you want to show in video.
Scenario making tips:
• Every video tells a story
• Keep it simple, not too much information!
• What is your goal? Promotion? Teaching?
• Who is your audience? Donors? Staff? Community members?
• What do you want to tell?
• Every scenario: description per scene, Location, actors and text
The scenario will be transformed into scenes and then into story board before shooting starts.
Martine educates participants about the various types of shots and their effects on the video. She talked about some examples of shots such as Extreme Close-up, Close-up, Medium shot, Long shot, extremely long shot and camera angels.
Percipients were broken into groups to develop concept for a project work of their choice to be to execute 3 minutes video at the end of the exercise. The various groups developed, shoot and edit videos based on their story board and scenarios and showcase it the rest of the groups. The training session was full of excitement as members learn and discover new techniques and ideas behind the videos they watch. Martine advised participants to take the lesson serious and apply it in their work. She further appears to the participants to share any interesting video they make with the GINKS Dgroups community.
By Joseph (joseph@ginks.org)
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GINKS: P. O. Box DTD 173 Cantonments, Accra – Ghana. Email: secretary@ginks.org
Tel: 0302 785654 Fax: 0302 785654 www.ginks.org