Blog and Video Casting

A chance visit to Sri Lanka by a Sri Lankan TV documentary maker, at presenting studying 'film making' in London, made a hastily organised 'Video-Bogging' workshop possible. Prasanna Ratnayaka really appreciates the rapid development of alternative media and saw immediately the considerable power of internet tools such as YouTube for communications and advocacy. I hadn't realised how well the google online applications such as 'blogger', 'Youtube', 'Picasa' and 'google documents' can fit together to provide an excellent and free networking platform.

How often do we come across partners anxious and yet struggling to design and then maintain a website. More often than not it is designed beautifully, at some expense, and then languishes for months with no updates. The company managing the site wants an increased fee or the IT person has moved on for a higher salary or quite simply only one person knows how to edit it.

I have been promoting blogger.com as an easy and cost effective way of creating a website which is free, and easy to use. Any or all the staff of an organisation can be involved. Uploading video into your blog site has also recently been introduced which considerably extends the flexibility of the blog. Uploading audio files, a simple recording on MP3 accompanied by a series of still pictures, is easily put together in Windows Movie Maker. Who needs expensive Channel 4 documentaries now?

Well yes I agree - we haven't in anyway replaced TV documentaries with their bog budgets but possibly opened up an important opportunity to make the discussion and feed into to main line television more interactive. Networks such as BBC and CNN are increasing seeking 'people's video content' and alternative web portals are opening up to carrying new popularly generated content.

Just like a doctors prescription all this can be made excessively complicated so when Prasanna and I got together to plan a 'Video-Blogging' workshop we wanted to ensure it was as simple as possible, using equipment within the grasp of most of our partners. We booked the training suite of Lankanet (a little cramped and with a narrow broad band access) and sent a hastily devised invitation.

At short notice CAFOD did approve a basic budget but we additionally decided to charge a 1,000 Rupee fee (about £5) - now that is fairly steep when the average wage of a shop assistant is 10,000 Rupees a month. However we wanted to ensure that those who came were really interested and committed and their organisation behind them and wanting real outcomes. Within 3 days we had 18 applicants and enough to make the exercise more than worthwhile.

We based the workshop on using a standard Digital Camera, with a video setting, and a 526 memory chip. We bought three additional cameras to ensure all participants had access to the tools they needed. Prasanna did an excellent morning presentation on camera angles, light, and the skill of making the boring, interesting and in the afternoon Prasanna roped in a friend from E-TV, a new local TV station, to introduce the basics of editing using Windows Movie Maker.

Using small digital cameras does have the weakness of poor audio quality. To get a reasonable sound the camera has to be almost down the subject's throat... as you'll see from some of the presentations we did on that day. By 4pm in the afternoon in groups of 3, the participants had prepared and uploaded 5 short presentations. Yes audio quality left a lot to be desired but I think everyone learnt the importance of going for audio over picture quality.

Now we're in the final days of a competition we set to stimulate follow up to the workshop. Each participant is invited to make a 3min presentation on the work of their organisation and upload it onto Youtube or our hastily established BLOG. The one judged by our trainers to be the best use of material and communicating a clear message, will win a digital camera. Uploads have to be done by 15th December. So visit the site and see the results!

If any of you readers are doing anything similar then do tell us.

The week after the workshop the World Forum of Fisher Peoples met for their General Assembly in Sri Lanka and we used video casts to try and give some airing to the range of problems and issues the small artizanal fisher people's face across the world.

As a tool for communicating and advocacy this medium is still relatively new but it is growing and changing fast and we need to give all the assistance we can to our partners to see how they can best turn these tools to their advantage.