UN DÍA PERFECTO: Vídeo Participativo en el IES Johan Carballeira

1. We started with a methodology based on the “Common Bank of Knowledge” to start working on their self esteem, their invisible knowledges and to foster dialogue among the group.
2. We introduced some ideas about filmmaking; storyboard, framing and other expressive features of audiovisual.
3. First groupal task: recording and editing a tutorial about one thing they know and they could teach to other people. As a result, we had four short videos: about photography, hairdressing, makeup and how to use the app Music.ly

During this day, we splitted the class in two groups, students were free to decide which one they wanted to join, this two groups were the ones we know that already existed in the classroom. Also, during this day we decided to focus on their team-working skills, diversity, creativity and positive interactions as a tool for  participation and dialogue.

All in all, we were able to raise their interest into the activity and make them all responsible of ending a duty. Both groups worked collaboratively and roles were divided naturally: the process of making a video made them being focused in teamwork and accomplishing a task.

During this day, we worked together, it’s the first collective work between the two confronted groups.

1. We took back the previous day work in which they answered what  were their favourite activities and joined all the answer in one single cardboard.
2. After looking at this cardboard, we split them in three groups and told each group to decide one answer (one activity) among all. Then, they had to write feeling they relate with this activity..
3.Once finished, we shared the conclusions:

In this moment we introduced the objective of the activity: creating a character representing the interest and characteristics of all members of the group.

4. During the next part of the workshop, we work and discuss about the representation of women in advertising, TV, newspapers and cinema, in order to introduce some critical thinking on the way we are building our character. This activity it’s also aimed to reflect about gender equality, violence (physical, social or emotional) and the ideal of “romantic love” as a cultural background leading to control, dependency and gender violence.
5. We ended this day working in small groups, each one has to choose one part of the day (morning, afternoon, evening or night) and drawing a storyboard for a short film. The topic they had to write the story about was: a perfect day. How would this perfect day be? Each group had to develop the story for their period of the day.

When we concluded, every girl realized that they had many interests in common. Emotions and feelings they choose and their images of a perfect day matched. They all prioritize freedom, friendship, future and having fun.  Ita was also very productive the collective reflection about women representation in media, as their opinion were very critical, far from heteropatriarchy or submission to men; next step is trying to drive this ideas to their attitudes, their daily life, which is much more challenging.

1. Read and review the storyboard splitting the participants into small groups to make it easier to work.
2. We defined the teams (who’s going to film, play this role…), the production needs (atrezzo, customs…) and the locations.
3. All the filming should be done within the school. They had also to write a text for the voiceover.

This day was very intense and productive. Even having less participants due to medical reasons, the re-distributions of tasks and roles was really successful. They worked together and all of them were strongly committed with their job. Those who were chosen as team coordinator showed a great capacity to lead and dialogue and that was essential for the whole work.

Problems appeared when 3 girls arrived late to the activity as they had decided at the beginning of the day to stay at the entrance of the school but wanted to join later, in the middle of the activity. When they arrived, the ones that were already filming stayed focus on their work and even ask them to leave them alone, that they cannot join in the middle, or they can be there but only if they wanted to help with what they were already filming and not bothering. Just one girl of those who were filming decided to quit and move out with the group of three, leaving her tasks unfinished. All the others continued responsibly until the end of the day doing a great job. It was really nice to work with them this day.

1. Reviewing previous day filming, what we had to film this day and organizing tasks and groups
2. Filming.
3. Watching together the raw materials.
4. Skype chat with a professional make-up artist.
5. Farewell.

This day was also very intense as there was a lot to film. We started in the events room where they filmed at the same time a scene representing a concert and a night party. Both groups worked with scripts that were not necessarily the ones they had wrote. They had different rhythms, ones were very concentrated and started fast but the others needed more time. Finally, roles were divided naturally by them attending to their abilities: camera, actress… and concepts about audiovisual language started to come up: in this part we will listen that sound while entering, use a low angle for this, start panning.,.

It was really rewarding when the “anti-sexist” alarm sounded on her brains, as they were choosing musics and said “we don’t want to use this song, we really love it but it’s very male chauvinist and don’t want it to represent us”.

At the end, we all came back to the classroom and watched a video that a colleague, a makeup actress, sent us answering some question made by the participants that we collected previously: How did she became professional, what did she studied, was it easy or difficult…

It was a meaningful day. Now, we just have to edit and show their movie  “Johana’s perfect day”, a collective character made of all of them. At the end, they had more in common that they expected!