Group of young people produces a promotional video about things to do in Shropshire town
A group of youngsters have produced a video which promotes their favourite places to visit in Shrewsbury.
The project was created so that young people with learning disabilities could try out a variety of filmmaking roles; whilst also producing content which other people with learning disabilities could watch before visiting the town.
We ensured all the locations featured were welcoming for people with learning disabilities, such as The Old Market Hall – a cinema which provides relaxed screenings of their films.
The project was organised by The Hive and PACC Shropshire, with video production instruction provided by Hannah from VideoHQ.
Leading workshops and teaching video production
Leading workshops was a new experience for me – the last time I was involved in video production classes, I was on the other end of the experience as a student!
I ran a taster workshop where young people who were interested in the project could try out a variety of roles, after which the participants were able to indicate a preference for the role they wanted.
This was anything from actors, camera operators, storyboarders and video editors.
After a series of further workshops to teach their participants their assigned roles, we started to plan our filming sessions in the town.
Real world filming experience in Shrewsbury
While many filmmaking workshops just teach the skills in controlled environments, we wanted the participants to fully experience what it is like to film on location.
We filmed the promotional video at six different locations in Shrewsbury:
The Library; The Quarry; Palmers Cafe; Nerdy Coffee; The Old Market Hall; In Good Hands cafe – so a huge thank you to the staff at these locations for allowing us to come and film with them.
At each location, the young people were responsible for the filming – I merely offered guidance where it was needed!
The presenter recorded a piece to camera; the sound operator made sure the audio levels were correct; the camera operator filmed the video; and the director told the actors how they wanted the scene to play out.
Editing the promotional video
Of course, filming the video is only part of it – the footage was then handed over to the editing team!
This group edited the footage to the vision that the planning team had originally envisioned, while making little adjustments such as colour correction, and adding music.
Footage of the piece to camera was overlaid with images of what the presenter was discussing, and sequences of action were pieced together showing the actors enjoying the spaces.
We didn’t want the promotional video of Shrewsbury to just talk about the different locations – we wanted to show that the young people enjoyed going there too.
VideoHQ can offer video workshops to a variety of different groups – whether it’s young people learning filmmaking for the first time, to businesses who want to brush up on their editing ability. If this is something which interests you, then get in touch to discuss how we can put together bespoke workshops for you.
