NEWS: We’ve been featured!

Check out who’s been talking about us on the volunteering scene…

1) Social action network, i-volunteer did a great feature on us about the project, mygames (powered by v) and how our London filmmaker Joe has benefitted from volunteering on this project.

View the news feature here

2) Also, award-winning travel writer, Andrew Mersmann, did a great post about the Digital Documenters on his blog, Change by Doing. He looked at the bigger picture of the Digital Documenters project, specifically how we can help to promote volunteering amongst young people and taking part in the 25th Hour.

Read Andrew’s full blog post here

For volunteering opportunities click here

Keep up-to-date with all the latest news as it happens, by following us on Twitter and joining our Facebook fanpage!

Related Articles

• Why Volunteer? by Jen Hancock (helpmyresume.info)
• The Lucky Number (socyberty.com)

Sheffield Doc/Fest… Rated!

More than a week after the Sheffield Doc/Fest, our team have returned with new perspectives on our projects. Some of the directing styles used gave us great ideas that we hope to incorporate and develop into our 60 second films.

Watch our vlog below: Filmed on the last day of the Sheffield Doc/Fest, Odira and Gabbie reflect on the festival…

Check out a selection of photos from the Sheffield Doc/Fest 2010 below. (See them all on Flickr)

Pai

Olivia

Katerina Cizek’s interactive documentary, Out My Window.

The Showroom

The Wilderness Downtown ‘postcard’ (part of the interactive film)

Rio

Uchenna

Centrepoint’s SpeakOut event

 

Image by id-iom via Flickr

 

This week, Joe, Jaleesa and Gabriella went along to film the SpeakOut event, which helped them to better understand the service Centrepoint provides and the young people that they work with.

SpeakOut was organised and run by young people living at Centrepoint hostels. The event gave Centrepoint service users the opportunity to voice their opinions and raise any concerns, views and ideas that they may have about their living conditions. With entertainment and food in abundance, and a prize draw, the event was filled with many great activities: There was a Rap Zone where young people brainstormed concerns that affected them, and looked at how song  lyrics are often influenced by real life issues. There was also a Graffiti Zone for people to leave comments.

Additionally, young people were joined by members of the youth parliament and a panel of senior managers where a heated debated quickly formed; as frustrated young people were not happy with the responses to their questions. The panel responded as best as they could and were  pleased to receive feedback, as it gives them a chance to make improvements on Centrepoint’s services.

Centrepoint is a national charity working to improve the lives of socially excluded homeless young people. They provide a range of accommodation-based services, specialist projects and floating support services. From these accommodation based services, Centrepoint helps young people to turn their lives around by gaining essential life skills, tackling physical and mental health issues, and moving into education or employment and a better future.

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For more photos from SpeakOut click here

Sneak peek of our Olympics video!

At the Birmingham film-making training back in September, we were busy making a short 60 second film about the Olympics. We wanted to collate the public’s opinion about the Olympics and whether they are excited about this massive sporting event coming to London in 2012.

Like to see a sneak peek of what’s in our 60 second film and who features in it? Take a look below…

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Introduction to Documentary Film-making training

This three day residential training session at Aston University, Birmingham was lots of fun! On the first day we analysed the concepts of documentaries and the different formats that they come in. We watched lots of different film documentaries and discussed what made them original, so we started to think about how we can incorporate that into our own ones, which we will eventually make. The second day was much more practical which involved brainstorming ideas, pitching and shooting a short film to get us into the swing of things! It was good practice, as we will have to be repeating these steps very soon.

Many thanks to award-winning documentary filmmaker, Mandy Chang, from the Grierson Trust.

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Hello

Hello and welcome to First Light’s Digital Documenters London blog!

Okay, so this is a little more than just a blog, it’s a way for us to share with you everything that we will be doing and keeping you updated as we work. So it’s kind of a production journal where we will be posting personal thoughts and developments, keeping you up to date on all the activities we’re working on, posting up pictures of us at work and even videos!  And it’s much more than that too- while on this project, we want to promote Olympic values, raise awareness about volunteering and learn some life-long skills as the next generation of film-makers and we’d love for you to join us in this journey. So take a look around, grab the RSS feed to stay updated and subscribe to this ‘blog’ to stay in tune with all the latest going-ons! See you around!

Forgotten what Digital Documenters is all about? Click here