Gappers - 24 hour film challenge

A few months ago, I stumbled (thanks to Amy I think) across Truetube on schoolswork.co.uk. This is another great example of how schoolswork.co.uk really links people with important resources and encourages partnering of organisations. As a freelance filmmaker and someone passionate about using media to educate, inform, inspire and spark debate, I found truetube to be an amazing site.

Anyway to cut a long story short, it resulted in me being able to do some work with truetube and the Rank Foundation working with Gappers to make a film in 24 hours.

I first came across Rank almost 20 years ago - they funded the youthworker at the project i attended; the project that gave me the opportunity to make my first film, which incidentally was to show at a Rank gappers event!

I was with working with 2 TrueTube staff members and we had the honor of working with inspiring youth workers. Some of them were only 17, and I was so impressed by them.

We gave an intro to filmmaking and then split into 3 groups to make films, I was with Charlie Harris from Rank and 10 amazing gappers,. No seriously, AMAZING GAPPERS.

They chose to do a film about drugs and alcohol and as members of the group shared stories of their experiences, or experiences of friends they knew I was fighting back the tears. Their stories were raw, real and the honesty and respect they showed when sharing these stories was amazing.

The young people had 3 hours to plan and film and then I edited, following their instructions that night so we could show the films the next day.

Stories are so important (as I found out more about on during ‘Stories with Significance’ earlier this year), and these real stories were shared genuinely with emotion clearly coming through.  I’d encourage people to record stories (video, audio, on paper ...however) as again and again the significance of story is demonstrated.

TrueTube is always looking for good films for their site, so maybe it’s a good way to engage with the students you work with?

You can see the 3 films made by the gappers here
http://www.truetube.co.uk/media.php?do=detail&mediaid=747

and find out more about Rank here :)
http://www.rankfoundation.com