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The dust finally settled from the Festival of Health and gave us time to get our project in Nomba underway. After watching the Yao filmmaker’s footage from the Festival of Health, we’ve pieced together a four-day film school to prepare them for their projects. We’ll cover aesthetics, technical aspects of the camera, interviewing and storytelling.
I kicked off the week teaching the basics of composition. The filmmakers learned the difference between an establishing shot and a close-up and the importance of shooting with the sun.
We learned the bell for class doesn’t ever ring exactly on schedule and some words don’t have a direct translation (tripod is ‘leg of camera’). And as Lucia reminded us to speak slower ‘panandi, panandi’, we realized that some habits followed us to Africa—we still talk too fast.
After the lesson, we each paired up with a Yao filmmaker to practice framing and getting four different camera shots. Our subjects? A pen of goats, rocket stove, water well and the Holton’s clothes-line.
