Finalizing story development for India film trip. Filmmakers arrive.

The DOC Team arrived in Udaipur India a week earlier then the students. The DOC team was made up Scott McPherson, Fanny Malo, and myself. Both Fanny and Scott are in film school. We arrived a week early in order to finalize the stories the youth had developed back in Montreal.

Our first priority when training the youth, who had little to no film knowledge, was to develop their abilities to tell a story. The act of filmmaking, especially documentary filmmaking, is an every changing story development process. For as much as you develop your stories, research and themes prior to arriving, the simple fact is that you are dealing with real people and real emotions, not to forget uncontrolled locations and acts of god, especially in India.

To get the young filmmakers engaged, and interested early, I didn't wanted to focus directly on social issues and overwhelm their senses, but simply to talk about movies and what they liked and why they liked it. We then asked them to create a film. The sky was the limit; their only limitations were the school grounds, and no money.

Each student was given a filmmaking package, which is a series of written and video tutorials, as well as Nokia N95 videophone. We also provided them templates, everything from mobile video tutorials to shotlist breakdowns and talent waivers. We began breaking down the stories they wanted to tell into what we would call a "classic" story structure. They to outlined the story, created characters and plot lines for the story. We then worked on fundamentals of filmmaking and capturing the necessary footage to tell the story. We were off to the races.

Once completing and viewing the student films they soon realized the challenges in planning something like a film and how it all culminates in a final product at the end. These early lessons helped craft their abilities to create a proper story outline, and character development, as well as create a shotlist for their particular story. In our next meeting began to talk about the types of stories they would be interested in telling while in Europe. The conversations soon turned the ideas of girl’s rights, arts and sports. I worked with the youth to develop fictitious stories, with characters, plot lines and shotlists around these stories. Once complete, these story ideas were then sent along to our minders in India to find these potential stories for the documentary. Before long, stories were coming back from the field.

Once the stories from the field were in, the students were presented with the characters, and given vital information about them, their families and situation. The filmmakers then broke up into groups and began to develop themes, outline characters, and create interview questions for these stories. You have to remember that these stories dealt with issues of HIV, child labor, abuse and exploitation, a lot for the group to handle, especially first time filmmakers. It was our main goal to create a venue that the youth could feel safe to ask the difficult questions. The stories outlined in my previoous blog shows the fruits of their labor and resolve.

Fast forward to India ad here we are finalizing the filmmaker’s stories in preparation for their arrival, let the adventures begin. Check out behind the scenes footage of the filmmaking camps.