Graduation Films

 

Edited Films

The first five of the trail films have been uploaded and are ready to be linked to the GIS trail on google maps.

Leaving…and arriving

It’s been a long trip and a long week, and it’s time to find the missing posts and then sign off. It’s been a long week, which is nice, because usually things like this feel like they’ve been over in a flash. 

I didn’t get out to the walk in the morning yesterday because I was helping make the rooms the right shape again, and then we had a long debrief. It was a chance to think forward into the future, and look at what we’d do better next time and what else we’d like to do.  In the end, the three things I’d take away are the importance of fixed points (a more regular framework to the day), of skilful action (doing things that make the whole situation better), and having enough time for a more rigorous technical setup.

Since then I’ve been unpeeling layers of people – down to just me staying behind an hour at the Szechenyi Baths in Budapest at lunch-time.  A rather unexpected media lunch in my usual BP internet cafe (hi guys, if you’re reading), and eventually I’m back in my office minus one bottle of red wine that got mashed all over the inside of my luggage.  I’m still learning things about flash video, but by tomorrow it’ll back to the day job and on to pastures new.

Finishing Off – Friday Afternoon

This afternoon, the biggest task was to close the training off in a good spirit.  I tell every group I work with like this that they have been the best ever, and it’s always true in the moment.

Some important things we did to close:

• Tidy up the room
• Take a moment to let go of frustrations, misunderstandings, and missed opportunities
• Think about what worked, what you learned
• Respond to others and value what they say
• A round of thanks, everyone to each person in turn

An important device in the session was the certificates.  We played with that and made the afternoon an exam, a test of whether people should graduate.  What people had learned became the theory test, and we also had a practical.

We needed a short piece for the werkfilm anyway, so we split the group into 2 and ask them to make a short piece, based on an example from our last project together in Ireland.  It took a while – longer than the 20 mins we had originally asked for – because we relaxed the schedule a bit and moved the part of the session about looking forward to after supper. When I saw the films, I got properly choked up.  They’d used the extra time to do some editing on the footage, and Jani and our pro editor Peti (Pete) had done their magic.

So we passed them all with flying colours, and it was right and fitting that Guszti and Zsuzsa should present the certificates.  The rest of our team stood behind and smiled and supported them. Fantastic.

Not on location

I’ve managed to go the whole project without going out on location, so from my point of view it’s been a slightly mysterious activity – something to send people to and receive them back from.  I’m not complaining at all, it gave me some space to replenish myself after the face-to-face training and be read to catch things as they come up.

This morning was a joy – we got up and sat down to breakfast, and by the end of the meal the teams had worked themselves out, we had an agreement where to meet (the pub in Nagyvazsony) and off they all went.  Three of us set up our nerve centre and have had time to start assembling photos and think through how to bring the training element together.

The crews are starting to arrive now and so it looks like the last of the trail films are in the can.  The editor was going to title the 6 we had ready for last night and compress them for the web, so there should be something pretty to look at later today (internet willing)

Nerv(ous) centre for future operations - Rupesh, Friday AM

Three of us are sitting in the cavernous hall of the pub in Nagyvazsony. We wanted to open up a little nerve centre here in the village so that the three film crews who are out and about this morning could come and drop in when they are done rather than go back to to the forest school. The bar is the only public space open in the village in the winter, so we are forced to set up next to the rather ropey wooden 'dancing' platform, shrouded by remains of last night's smoke.

In our hearts are the remains of the week. In our minds are thoughts about what we can do to help the group leave well. There will be plenty of fond farewells, but what can we do to keep the spirit of learning and adventure, which has emerged here during the week, glowing and growing into our futures?

Celebrations

Far, far too much to cover now -it's the stub end of a party and I'm blogging this (and one or two other things), and everyone left in the room is partying.  We've done well tonight - showed 6 films from the project and the 6th one was still hot from the render.  Lots of stuff in Hungarian, and then we're left here dancing. I hope the trail project went well, because the training seems to be a bit of a success.

The afternoon was a mix of the practical (sorting out the arrangements for the social with the local community), and some ad-hoc training on facilitation.  It's worked out - on to polishing things off tomorrow.  The picture kind of says it all.

Why Rocks?

The English title of our project came from a mistranslation.  When we began to put material together about the project to share with the Naturama group, Gusztav ran it through Google translate so I could get an idea of what was being promised.

In Hungarian, it's KöVi, which is Gusztav's translation of PV - something like an acronym of community video.  Google translate picked this up as kővi, (which isn't really a word, though kő meand stone)
and the title read "Naturama Rock".

It wasn't a big step from there. So in Hunglish (the shadow language in between Hungarian and English, which is used to translate between the two because it's a bit too big a jump to go directly) remember that "PV Rocks"

Film and story exercise

The other group film from yesterday – It turned into an advert for the Forest School.  The last line was actually a direction - “Act like children now”, but we kept it in.  As with the first film, the edit was done by one of us as a demonstration of editing.

This one was rendered as a wmv from the edit, and then uploaded through the you-tube web interface.

First film – which render do you prefer?

I’ve uploaded the first film from yesterday.  Not for the project, but from the training.  The original render I was given was far too long for mobile upload, so I’ve tried re-rendering and uploading it through two different paths.  Comments welcome on them – I don’t even know what they look like until youtube has finished processing them.

Render 1 – Through Windows Live Moviemaker and uploaded directly from inside the programme to youtube.

Render 2 – Through Sony Vegas, and uploaded through youtube’s web interface

Quietness

This morning my job is sitting in the pub, in case anyone wants a break or a chat.  It’s a misty morning with a hard frost, but with some luck it will lift and we’ll have a bit of sunshine to finish the bulk of the shooting in.  It’s starting to come already, I think.  Quiet here, and I’ve finally sorted out some offline blogging software.  Next step is setting up a youtube account for the videos – the first one’s are looking good. We can start getting them online, along with the videos from the training yesterday and the day before.

There was no reflection session this morning – we didn’t want to get in the way of the teams’ preparations for shooting.  They put an awful lot of work in last night into ironing out snags and thinking about how to improve things.  We’ll need to make sure we pick up on that later today.  Just as much effort last night went into fixing up the P in PV, as the the V.  But it’d be good to revisit that as a group and see if it’s made a difference.

With changing the teams around again (more people leaving, some coming back), one of the best signs that the sense of responsibility for outcomes had been handed over was the team who told us they wanted Rupesh to be their camera man.  It’s funny because he’s very experienced in the producer/trainer role but not on the the technical end.  I think he’s always wanted to have the chance to play with a camera and now he’s having to make sure it’s switched on, pointing in the right direction and monitoring sound without falling over his feet.

Wed 21h45 Easing back

Things have been going much easier from my point of view.  They've been tougher for others this afternoon as the trainees engaged with actually making videos in front of people and all the strains in the group process that brings.

I think the catharsis came this evening as the problems and successes were shared, and people dropped into their role groups (technical, interviewer/facilitator and producers) to work on how to do things better tomorrow.

A plan had been developed by dinner and (I think) they've been sorting things out in their teams for the morning.  Time to go back and find out...and light a fire outside and get some wine and sing something.

Tuesday, 23. 11. 2010 (Róbert Aradi)

This morning started with a standard breakfast. At least, it was standard for me as an aboriginal Hungarian. I have never wondered about how weird an average Hungarian breakfast can be for a non-Hungarian. To tell the truth, there was no problem with the ham and the jam, but with the tea. Every people who was brought up in Hungary knows how a real kindergarten(school)-tea is about: it is more than really-really sweet and has an inexpressible and doubtless artificial flavour (most of us love tea with lemon and sugar in Hungary – but in school there are only money for the cheap sugar; not for quality tea and lemon), but we Hungarians are absolutely used to it, so we don’t even realise these facts about it (even more: it gives us a nostalgic feeling wondering about our childhood). But when three people coming from those tea-trading countries have this tea(?) in their hands, everything is mixed up. I’ll tell you what happened. I was sitting at the table in front of Rupesh, when he started to drink his tea having no doubt that he was going to drink a classic English tea. You’d have had to see his face when he realised that it is not a tea in the classical sense. ‘What is that?’ he asked with a face expression that I cannot forget until I live. Not because it was unforgettable; the unexpected surprise made it a must-to-remember moment. The same face expression and question arrived with Chris’ tasting of the essence. I couldn’t bear it without laughter. Why I am writing this is to show how undrinkable can be a tea that is loved by millions of Hungarians for people that are used to quality English tea. It is just a tiny difference, but I reckon it does make sense, because that shows how different we are even in very-very little, everyday things. 

Filming with the Forester – Wed 10h00-12h00

The first exercise with outsiders – stepping through the trail film process with one of the staff of the forest school.  We have Jani and Gusztav in role running the process, and everyone else watching and being extras when arriving visitors are needed and so on.  I’d spent the runup to that with the production group (there were only three roles in the end – some people had to leave today and we adjusted the teams accordingly).  My contribution was to talk to Zsuzsa before hand and leave her to get on with it.  I made coffee and spent 15 minutes afterwards explaining why – production is about organisation and getting the framework right.  When things are running well, then it’s best to leave them be and subtly support it.

Technical group – Wednesday 09h45 - Namita

The group handling the camera was with Jani, trying to get the equipment sorted. Complications, is how the session can very simply be defined. Jani struggled with  the different cameras, different formats, different mics, different editing systems, and trying to make them work with each other. You get the idea! After around 45 minutes of struggling, four shooting kits came together, which are ready to go with the four different teams.

Interviewing group - Wed 09h45 - Rupesh

As Chris says, there’s a sense of needing to hand over the stick now. We were in a small group of four with Gustav and I trying to prepare them to take on the interviewing role. I’ve been interviewing people for information for almost 15 years and each time I do it I still feel some sense of uncertainty about how things will turn out. Experience will teach them a lot but we also want to pass something on that might be useful (they are beginning to feel like ‘our babies’, so we might need to watch out for this mothering tendency).  So, what do we say in 20 minutes to a group for whom this was the first time they would ever interview anyone?

We kept it fairly simple.

We offered a little bit technical guidance. We’ve all handled some sort of tool or implement and so it’s important not to get afraid of this set of kit. So, here’s how to hold the mic (now hold it, feel the weight in your hands), point it towards the interviewee and try to keep it out shot. Oh, and remember to check if it's recording well.

Some relational stuff. Interviewing is an experience you create together, so you need build a relational space in which interesting stories, information and personal energy can come out. So try to make the interviewee comfortable and at ease, take them for a little walk whilst the crew is setting up, ask safe entry questions (things which they can answer quite simply, like “when did you first come here?”).

And also some personal grounding. You are interviewing someone, this is an active verb and suggests the practice is around being actively engaged. But what does that mean?  Active listening is a key behaviour here, since you want to give the participant the experience of being listened to (and handily, the practice of checking back understanding can help your brain tick along nicely and elicit richer information). Keep your body active; this is not about being hyper-active windmill of arms and legs. If you are standing then relax yourself, don’t lock your knees out. And finally, engage with active and empathic heart; this is human-to-human communication mediated by some technology, so show the interviewee when you hear things you like, breathe and smile for them. 

Giving things away – Wed 07h00

Prophetic words last night.  I’ve just roughed out the plan for the morning, and it’s coming together.  The order of the day is ‘handing over the stick’, as Robert Chambers has it. If I can’t solve a problem, then it’s time to share it.  So this morning we’re dividing the interview teams up by role to prepare with people on our team who know a lot about that role.  The task is to work out the answers to some questions: 

For example:

Technical group – Jani Lajos

            ?  What do we need for filming

            ? How do we look after it

            ? Getting good shots

            ? How can we get good sound

The other roles , facilitator/interviewer, and producer/organiser are with other people.  We’ll also do a presentation on the process for making the trail video and then step straight outside and try it out with a local forester.

Responsibility - Wednesday 00h30

Today/yesterday/Tuesday, what ever we want to call it – a long day with a 20 minute nap in the middle and not much down time apart from that.  We’ve made enormous progress, I think, but some of it has been bludgeoned along.  I’m sure we’re half a day short somewhere. 

The theme of the day was telling stories, through words, through images, through movement and myths.  If the highpoint yesterday was seeing the joy of being in charge of the camera for the first time, then today the big payoff came at the end when we saw the first films arriving. Shining faces – I’m always surprised at how quickly groups can become imaginative film-makers.  It’s a step into freedom and I think the foundation of some of PV’s power.

The thing that’s keeping me up at night now is a feeling that we could be better prepared for tomorrow.  We’ve got trainees interviewing in the morning , and there’s still all that stuff on facilitation, on active listening and so on and so on that I’d like to do.  I’m happy they’ll be happy, but I feel some responsibility for the experience of the people they’ll be working with. Will they be coming from Mars?  We’ve warned the interviewees that the groups are learning to do this for the first time.  I suppose everything has to happen for the first time some time, but right now I’d happily take up an offer to stay in bed and let someone else sort it out.

Tuesday 13h00 – Appreciating intercultural difference…or warm cherry soup for lunch.

From Rupesh:

Part of being a facilitator of other people’s learning is an ability to appreciate vast differences in cultures. A leaning back posture can mean an attitude of relaxed attention in one situation and a complete sense of apathy and boredom in another. Similarly, Cherry Soup (meggyszosz) can mean lunch in one culture and a strange out-of-body experience in another. 

Tuesday 13h30 – Using Theatre

We were a little stuck with scripting what we’re calling the werkfilm – The piece of media that will be played as part of a presentation to a community that might build a tourist trail.  It’s going to happen a lot of times over the next few years, hundreds of these presentations and each one with this film in it.  The problem was that from the initial discussion last night it was clear that the film was being treated as an opportunity to pipe some information – a standardised representation of what the GIS ‘thing’ was. 

So we broke things open with some drama – getting people to be things,  a projector, a screen, a welcoming smile – and use that to explore the situation in which the werkfilm would be used.  The feedback was that it reduced tension, and from my perspective got people into a more creative mode.  There was a shift when people realised that a girl holding  a water bottle on her head could be a projector, that we could use an imaginary remote control to stop and start the speaker, and that Zsuzsa could be a GPS rather than fetch one.  Above all, it was fun and that made some space for the grind of a scripting workshop that followed. 

Participant blog Rácz Judit - Tuesday AM 23/11/2010

Milyen arra ébredni egy erdő közepén, hogy közösségi filmkészítést fogunk tanulni? Rémisztő… J

A reggeli motoszkálást fél nyolcra hirdettük meg, és hála a szakadozó térerőnek hét előtt nem is szólaltak meg a telefonok. Tegnapról már ismerős arcok a reggelinél, csöndes töprengés, hogy vajon mi vár ránk ma, és máris bent ülünk a tréningen, ahol Chris segít áthozni a tegnapi fontos gondolatokat a mába, néhány pillanatra még koncentrálhatunk a megérkezésre, és a jelenlétünket is megerősítjük itt, most, ebben a csoportban.

A tegnapi lelkesedést sikerül átmenteni néhány rövid rácsodálkozással, hogy, jaj…, amikor először volt kezemben a gép, azt éreztem, hogy… és meg tudom örökíteni azt a megismételhetetlen pillanatot… és hogy minden, amit megtanulsz a kameráról valaha, annak a fele akkor lesz tudássá a fejedben, amikor először veszel a kezedbe egy addig ismeretlen filmkészítésre alkalmas eszközt.

Mire való ez az egész? Chris megoszt velünk egy történetet, abból az időből, amikor Indiában először forgattak filmet a helyi közösségfejlesztőkkel. A kezdeti lelkesedés nem akart csillapodni, és mindenki el volt ragadtatva a technikai eszközöktől. De a stáb célja, egy helyi közösség tagjainak a motiválása volt az együttműködésre, nem pedig az újabbnál újabb technikai eszközök reklámozása. Be kellett mutatniuk a résztvevőknek, hogy a film mennyire alkalmas arra, hogy valótlan dolgokat állítson be valósnak, és milyen fontos a helyiek közös tudása, hogy nem a film számít, hanem az a mód, ahogy a képzelet beindítja a közös cselekvéseket, ahogy az emberek közötti valós párbeszéd beindul. „Amikor használjátok a videózást a saját munkátokban fontos emlékezni rá, hogy az egész fontos, nem csak az, hogy hogyan készítetek egy felvételt”.

…és máris arról beszélünk Rupesh irányításával, hogy milyen egy jó történet, milyen elemei vannak, milyen típusa van a szereplőknek, milyen tudással bírnak, hogyan hat a környezet a cselekményre, mennyire fontos egy sztoriban a dráma, mitől lesznek emberi tulajdonságai egy szereplőnek.

…és folyik a történetmesélés négyes csoportokban, a játékba belefeledkezve tanuljuk, mit jelent a történet őrzőjének, újramesélőjének lenni, és mekkora a szerepük van azoknak, akik a történetek elmondásában, feldolgozásában részt vesznek. Mindezt úgy, hogy közben érdekes történetekkel ismerkedünk meg…

Aztán Namita jön, képeket választunk, abból rakjuk össze a saját sztorinkat, hogy egy gyors képcsere után újragondoljunk mindent, és a képek adta ötletek segítségével újabb történetek szülessenek… és jééé… bármilyen tartalomból lehet történetet írni J

10h00 Story telling workshop – from Rupesh Shah

As a facilitator you are often in a position where you need to give instructions to people. And not just to get people back after tea.  You find yourself with a vague idea in your head, a half dreamt experience you want people to have or an imagined trajectory that you feel participants would learn from. If they are good enough, these fantasies want to be realised.

This means taking the idea and thinking about how you can help people move from where they are to where you might like them to be. It is perhaps relatively easy to do this if you don’t care too deeply about what people’s needs and responses are. You just shout instructions at them. But what if you want participants to have an experience of cooking, rather than that of simply being dragged through a series of steps in a recipe?

We did a story telling exercise this morning. I imagined an experience where participants would move from telling and hearing a 7-minute story of a great journey to a retelling and re-listening of it as a tale of mythic proportions in two minutes. It could see it involved different people taking different roles – original story owner and teller, story transmitters and a story guardian. But how to not lose people in the complex movement between different subgroups that was required.

To prepare for this it was important to clarify beforehand a sequence of logical actions that people would need to undertake. I could be seen dancing around the training room last night, murmuring to myself as I literally walked through exercise. It’s a bit a like a footballer rehearsing a physical movement again and again in practice training so that her muscles become accustomed to the particular experience.

And then like the footballer, a facilitator needs to be able to perform the trick when required in the middle of real match conditions. So I like to have the steps in mind, to stay true to them but also be aware of what is happening in front of me and the bigger purpose. Whilst I can’t do anything without the steps and micro movements, the danger is that if I get completely caught up in them I likely to trip up over a small blade of grass or a question coming from an unanticipated intelligence. And for me I can see a danger in shutting down the emergence of creativity.  

Tuesday 09h00 Reflections

Mornings start with some reflection – what do we want to bring over from the day before.  It takes a little time to warm up and you need to be gentle as a facilitator.  How was arriving here?  What did you notice?  Working through translation means you miss nuances but it also slows things down, which is a good thing for reflection.  

Exploring what the important moments were yesterday can get very interesting and it’s good to explore some of those experiences were about.  This morning we picked up on some fairly spontaneous recording around a different exercise (the chat show).  It was a good opportunity to bring in the idea of taking control and of learning how to be a film maker.

Reflection time is a good space to drop ideas in, which means you’re looking out for opportunities to tie what’s coming up with what’s gone before.  So the next thing was linking what people were saying to telling stories (this morning’s theme).  A comment about capturing important moments led to a riff on how those moments are held and whether just pointing a camera at things was a good way to hold on to them.  The rest of the morning is about story telling. 

Contracting

16h30

Running a programme over several days rather than a few hours needs a good infrastructure to hodl everything together.  Contracting means agreeing with a group the ground rules.  We did it alongside peoples ambitions for the week – What would you like to have achieved?  What do we need to pay attention to to make sure you can achieve that?  Because most of the suggestions come from the group, it’s easy to use for facilitation because you can remind them it was their idea.  It also gives a positive context for explaining and agreeing some of your own boundaries – no drink near the equipment, for example.  Or have fun and don’t forget to breathe.

Games

16h00

We play games with people to set up a different set of opportunities for learning and communication.  Straight discussion can only get you so far and it’s deadly if that’s all you do.  Games can establish trust, demonstrate particular points or sometimes just fail badly.

Rupesh is a master of games and madness, the team ‘back pocket’. He and Namita had us pushing one another around the room, whizzing about making mini-documentaries and other hi-jinks, sometimes on 5 minutes notice.

In PV the games are used to find out about film making and facilitation.  Much more effective than description and instruction (even with diagrams and a smile), and a good preparation for lots of active doing with a bit of pressure attached.

Introductions

15h00

Starting something off means listening more than talking.  It takes people time to stop being where they came from and to be where they are instead.  It’s also the worst time to try and dump lots of information on them (I think).  So the first order of the day is listening – letting people introduce themselves, and start to map out what they want, what they think they’re do, who they want to be.  The trick then is to try and use that in setting up our side of the introductions – we’d like to do that thing you said, we can do that…that sadly isn’t possible this time though it’s a good idea.

That’s the theory.  The practice is that we’re now on the revised, revised, revised plan with some people still due to arrive and the first ones leaving – the main thing is to start to build a positive atmosphere.  We’ve played with cameras more than we meant to at this point, had an introduction to the local process for creating tourist routes and had some introductions.  After a short break we’re back in there and it could be negotiating ground rules or a chat show.  Watch this space.

Our team

Gusztav and I have worked together for about 6 years now, mixing scholarship, action and friendship.  So when we decided to go ahead with this project, it was about pulling in the group of people we want to work with and can trust, and mixing them all together.  The result is pretty international with a team from three continents, speaking 5-10 languages between us and a collective CV to die for.  It’s a luxury to have a team of 7 for a week’s project and one we’ll shamelessly abuse.

Rupesh and Namita have come with me from the UK, both with rich experience of community video making, training and facilitating,  and an interest in action research. We’re responsible for pulling the training side of things together, alongside G.

Gusztav has matched them with  a team of Hungarians: Zsuzsa is a local development manager and our liaison with the local community, and just happens to be married to him.  He’s also brought one of his students from Budapest,  Robi,  who will translate for those of us unfortunate enough not to share the working language of the week, Hungarian.  Finally, there’s Jani, who’s our technical director and an old hand at this now.  He’s the best sort of film-maker to have along: calm, willing and very competent.

Moving furniture

12h00

This morning was about getting the space set up and shaking things out as a group.  The staggered arrival of the participants put the first real bit of pressure on, with adjustments to the programme every 10 minutes it felt.  Building trust within the team is always the first task – everything else flows from that – learning, community spirit, … success.  It’s always a task as well – several of us have been through all this before together and we still need to move the furniture around at this new place until we have made it twice as big and welcoming for the next set of people.

Planning

It's taken weeks to get this point, but we've still spent the day going in circles.  Hours working out in English, and sometimes Hungarian what to call something, when it should happen and what colour to use to write it down.

It's frustrating, but the point is to have a blow by blow account of what's happening and to whom for the whole of the rest of the week.  No one died of doing this, but sometimes you want to.

There's still plenty more to do this evening - two more team members to arrive (or get lost), detailed working out of sessions. Discussions of logistics, outcomes and more, but it feels like we've broken the back of it and not broken our friendship, and we've hit a gallop occasionally - seeing how to do things really well at some points.  It's much more creative bouncing ideas off someone else than trying to flesh things out on your own.

What we're doing

Naturama KoVi is a project in Hungary, using participatory video (PV) in rural development.  The Naturama Alliance is an alliance of LEADER groups, who're collectively interested in sharing their experiences of rural development and all work on the edge of national parks.

Over the next week we'll be working with them on a project linked to tourist trails - local routes that guide visitors around a locality on foot, horseback or by car, using GIS.

PV will be used to produce rich media for the trail users, and to build the community of local people with an interest in each trail, such as stable owners, hoteliers, natural park staff and so on. The week will be a training-by-doing, developing the skills necessary to run the process throughout the Naturama alliance, documenting the process of making a trail, and developing and testing different ways of making the media for a particular trail.

Internet willing, we'll be blogging as we go along.  Weather permitting we'll have some lovely pictures  and videos of Hungary in the late Autumn to share.  It's also a chance to tell some good stories about PV in action.