Local campaigning using internet video

[draft article for AirFlash magazine - unpublished]

I am a community activist in Kings Cross in North London. It is challenging area with dozens of local campaigns. I use online media – websites, email, YouTube and Facebook to support and provide links between local campaigns. Everything is linked from www.kingscrossenvironment.com

We have had many campaigning successes where video has been instrumental: including wresting £1m from Network Rail for community improvements, using video to tackle noise pollution at Cemex one of the world’s biggest multinationals and a successful noise complaint against a major building site. YouTube tells me that I have had over 8,000 views of local films in a year. The films are a mix of campaigning and community interest with some humour and nature content to leaven the mix.

With no experience of traditional broadcasting, I set production values firmly at a level for the audience comfortable with the YouTube style. From a community perspective it is very clear that there are sharply diminishing marginal returns to production values. The emphasis is on getting the raw message out, once you have done that prettifying occupies time that could be more productively spent campaigning on something else.

To distribute video I upload films to YouTube and then distribute them by embedding them into the community website www.kingscrossenvironment.com . The video is closely linked to the campaigning issue. As a recent experiment I have pulled forty or so YouTube clips about Kings Cross together in a single website Kings Cross TV Although I am not sure yet what to do with this site or how to market it – it is a sort of placeholder and proof of concept. A high percentage of the population use the internet regularly. YouTube provides a constant on demand, highly robust playout for free – from a community perspective ‘live’ and the marketing required to get your audience seems to be an oddity.

Reading Airflash for the first time it is fascinating to see people who are apparently grant funded to make community video. I would feel guilty accepting public funding here in Kings Cross for making community video. There are other pressing needs for a given amount of money. For £1,000 you could put on a lot of pensioners teas or distribute some print media into social housing areas.

In all except the poorest communities it should be possible to assemble the basic bits of kit to make a simple film and get it on the internet to get a community message across. The skills required have plummeted in the past couple of years. This is fundamentally liberating and pro-democratic. An over emphasis on the need for near-broadcast production values and expensive equipment risks denying this opportunity to people. As community film makers we can learn far, far more from the Dogme manifesto than from Despatches. Keep it simple, keep it free, keep it focussed.

The tech bit

Films are made using whatever capture device is to hand – a mobile phone (Nokia E61i), a digital stills camera using the video clip setting (Panasonic FX30) or a JVC GR-D240EK Digital Video Camera bought for £125 on ebay, with an extended battery pack). They are processed on a year-old Sony Vaio laptop using Adobe Premiere Elements, recently upgraded from 2.0 to 4.0 for £60.

Video is output usually as to wmv and then uploaded to YouTube or occasionally GoogleVideo. The YouTube clip is then embedded into a Typepad blog using the standard YouTube embed code, which costs about £9 a month to support about six different web sites. A video can get online within about 30 minutes of capture.

Dogme Maifesto and vow of chastity

http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm

1. Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found). 

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

3. The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place).

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.) 

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

9. The film format must be Academy 35 mm. 10. The director must not be credited.