Today's Movie-Making: Audio Stories! Facebook!

We took last Saturday off, due to the dearth of volunteers (though actually, I think we'd have had three of us...) and also to the fact the Bhola, our Bhutanese refugee, was invited to participate on the Nepali soccer team at the national convention in Raleigh and couldn't refuse.

So this week, we had a full agenda. Mike Smith, our audio guy, was present and accounted for-- one of two sessions he's able to give us. So each student had to record a voiceover for her or his movie. We had asked the students to come to class with a video they'd recorded on the FlipVideo telling us about the story they will be doing as a movie for the class.

Bhola thought he was recording the audio for his story, and so didn't film his face. Sara did hers, and I'll post it here and on our (!) NEW (!) Facebook group page. Amina, from Niger, did hers, but I ran out of time before I could get it onto my computer. It's fantastic, though, so watch this space for that one when I finally get my hands on it. Nobody else really understood the assignment, I'm afraid. I gave the assignment over the phone, and that's never the best way to convey information to people whose first language is not English.

Mike, who in Real Life is professor of Information Systems at High Point University, took the students one by one to a nice quiet corner of the University of Greensboro building where we hold our classes. Also, Tom Lassiter, another volunteer and accomplished videographer, did the the same. As the students were progressively getting their stories recorded, we worked with the ones who hadn't quite got their stories down on paper. We've worked for weeks on these tales, but some of the students were at that point, creatively, where they faced the WALL. Jean-Francois Llorens, my husband and also a professor at High Point Univerity, worked one-on-one with folks who didn't quite have their stories ready for recording. Lori Khamala, our funder and project director from the American Friends Service Committe also put in some time gently guiding the creatively intimidated.

We emerged triumphant! Everybody's voiceover is now in Mike's capable hands. He's going to take the ums and ahs and dead space out of each. He'll be back next week to get everyone their mpg3 file for their movie.

I was thrilled by the teamwork from the volunteers today, I must say. We are quickly reaching that point in the class where it's fish or cut bait...and we're committed to every single student walking away from this class with a finished movie. Our volunteers are vital...I could not produce nine movies with just me and the day's teacher.

We lost another student today, though, which saddened us. Thang, better known as Steven, just couldn't manage to make it...his second absence and so we had to say goodbye. I even talked to his supervisor at Perdue Chicken and got the impression that Stephen would be given a pass to come to class. Apparently they've got mandatory overtime, and if you miss more than a certain limit, you lose your job. I'm not sure how it happened that Stephen didn't make it today...I really did come away from my conversation with his boss that he was ready to support Stephen's education on this one.

Making up for our vacation last week, we got everybody signed up on Facebook and signed up for our Facebook group. Please do join the group! I'll be posting a notice there whenever I write a post here.

Movie-Making is a partnership between FaithAction International House (including its VISTA volunteer--me), the American Friends Service Committee, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Also in the mix is Worlds Touch, the international tech assistance organization that I founded and direct in my spare time.

Comments

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