Change Media brings stories to life, enhances community resilience and supports identity and capacity building.
We are excited to build a sustainable network of communities who can produce their own digital content. We look forward to collaborate with groups who want to achieve this in their community. Every year we secure umbrella funding to facilitate this process. In the last two years all our community projects began through referrals, with communities or service agencies contacting us with an expressed need. We are happy to discuss your community idea and see if we can tailor a collaboration. For further information please email us.
Public recognition of community based video production
Over the last 5 years Tallstoreez has received a vast array of requests for support. Communities, councils, youth groups, schools and government agencies are recognizing the benefits of community based video production to document events, promote issues, engage individuals in their community, share stories and transmit skills and knowledge to creating video acquittal reports.
Tallstoreez has successfully tailored workshops for communities to make films, create digital media and websites. We have already supported many communities to continue to make their own media. Several of our participants have been accepted into Screen Study courses, from a highly competitive selection process. Others now work freelance in the media industry.
Many films have received prestigious awards and the communities ‘voice’ has been heard and appreciated around the world, at festivals, national TV, online and at public and private screenings.
And most importantly, young people have enthusiastically engaged in their communities, setting up dialogues across generations to film and craft their stories.
Recent community projects include:
10×14 Bricks – Stories from Youth in Lock-up This school based project in a juvenile secure care facility ran over 5-weeks, during 14 sessions, to train the students in digital film making and produce a crime prevention DVD resource.
Nukkan.Kungun.Yunnan, Ngarrindjeri’s Being Heard, This community project included a 4-day train-the-trainer production with a newly formed group of youth leaders, who were keen to set up a media hub to produce their own stories and record their Elders.
What’s Yours is Mine…d, This community project included a 4-day production with a newly formed group, who were interested in film making, but mostly had no previous experience.
Wurramooka News, This school project included a 4-day train-the-trainer production with selected student leaders, who were each responsible for learning specific digital media skills they could then share with the whole school.
Riverland Youth Theatre, edit-in-camera, This community project was a Sunday-one-day introduction session for interested community members, who were looking to meet others, learn about film making, create and have fun.
You can explore the scope of our community projects by genre here.
Project Outcomes
- Engagement and empowerment for the participants and their community
- Production sessions; Hands-on skills development in digital media, film narrative, research, documentary production, presenting to camera, cultural transmission, directing, editing, producing
- Train-the-Trainers sessions, to support their community to create and produce their own film/s
- Screening, feedback and rough cut review of film with the whole community
- Professional edit at Tallstoreez studio, to polish and finalise the community films
- Professionally authored DVDs, (including high quality peer-produced short film/s plus stills documentation)
- Quicktime data files of films & photos [delivered on disc] for use on websites
- Inclusion of project on Change Media website
- Ongoing technical, creative and networking support via phone/post/email, website/DVD
- Promotion of the message through DVD distribution and online video clips
- Community screenings & distribution of the film/s
- Support to set up a sustainable community media centre
How we structure our basic 2-week projects [including management, 4-day workshop and 5-day edit/ DVD authoring
During the 4-day workshop production, the team makes a short high-quality film [5-10min], creatively driven by the participants mentored by professional filmmakers / educators with current TV experience. We run the workshops as a professional digital media production, and they work hands-on, from first idea to realization; deciding team roles, creating the story, story-boarding, to the art & ethics of documentaries, camera and sound work, production management, acting, directing and digital editing wizardry.
Group discussions
These sessions use techniques such as Brainstorming, Mind mapping and CCD methodology to build trust and team-work to identify needs and film ideas for the group. Storytelling includes sharing beliefs, discussing issues, identifying the audience, brainstorming the key messages, discussing film genres & styles, dramatising real life and/or documenting real life and finding a common thread. It is also a way of clarifying the group’s decision-making process. These group conversations aid the transmission of cultural stories by mixing informal yarning and more formal white board note taking and audio/ video recording.
Media analysis
We view a variety of media to discuss film genres and identify film narratives relevant for the participating community. This is a powerful way to promote media literacy as well as an opportunity to explore industry pathways throughout the training sessions.
Writing, scripting, cartooning
Film-making requires an understanding of drama and documentary story telling practices. Young people are avid consumers of multi -media and have a sophisticated understanding of which stories work on screen. This is an opportunity to ‘unpack’ storytelling in detail and use Change Media’s tried and true strategies for developing community stories that are relevant. Techniques such as cartooning for storyboards and shot lists; shot sizes, composition, framing, lighting and movement are explored.
Filming
Participants develop an understanding of how to: adopt interview techniques relevant to their communities; identify relevant interviewees, locations and objects to be filmed; use broadcast quality cameras for video and audio capture and use digital stills cameras; play with screen language, camera movements and screen directions to entice the audience to keep watching!; utilize composition, framing, colour and lighting to drive the plot and push the emotional beat of their story.
All these skills support the sensitive transmission of cultural stories for documentation, demonstrations and / or re-enactment of appropriate cultural material.
Editing, authoring and web-design
To create a film story that respectfully portrays the community’s cultural practices involves technical skill as well as knowledge of the art forms represented in the film. The film comes ‘alive’ in the editing process; including creating visual special effects, sound-scapes and music; Creation of titles and graphic effects for the film; Creation of DVD template with menu/s; Creation of digital images and design for the DVD cover, label and posters; Creation of text for media / PR / posters; Creation of community-driven web sites. On the last workshop day the participants and community-partner representatives discuss the rough cut edit and agree on all final changes. We take the team notes back to the Change Media studio, to finish the final film without altering its integrity. We deliver the final DVD, including photo documentation, for every participant usually within 2-3 weeks after the workshop.
Screening and publishing
During each workshop the group produce a high quality quick time file that can be converted into a DVD for home, community or public use, uploaded onto the internet, or output to tape for cinema screenings or artistic video projections. Community screenings of the film is a powerful experience for community members, the film-makers and the support crews. It is an impressive moment for everyone involved.
The Change Media team also submits videos when appropriate to film festivals and for broadcast on NITV/ABC/SBS and each film appears on the Change Media website.
For further information please email us.