The kids films for Airtel have been compressed and uploaded to Cafesociety.org server.
Please follow the link to view the short films. Click Here :-

I have also been uploading quite a few images from this trip to Flickr….
Please follow the link to view the pics. Click Here :-

Well well, who would have thought i would be raising a glass to celebrate the Queens birthday this week.
I certainly didn’t….

I received an invite to the cocktail party which was held at the residence of the British High Commissioner to Seychelles,
Diane Skingle.

The cocktail party was to celebrate the Queens 80th birthday.

After school Martin and myself headed home to watch the Korea vs. Togo game.

As I walked out of the house and onto the balcony I could hear a faint rendition of - ‘God Save The Queen’.
The band next door were obviously practising before their performance of the national anthem later.

Martin conveniently lives next door to the BHC’s residence so it was a quick 5 minute walk through the neighbourhood of Bel Air
passing by the growing line of traffic heading up the hill side to the party. The police had even turned up to try monitor and assist
with the increasing traffic trying to access the front gates.

Many large cars with a range of international flags flying from their near side wings indicated that this cocktail party was going to
be filled with The Seychelles ‘a’ list of dignitries and foreign officials. I was not wrong….

On entering the party I joined the que to be welcomed & greeted, in a very official way, by Diana, the British High Commissioner.

After grabbing a pint from the closest hostess we started to mingle and meet a number of very interesting people..

First up was the CEO of Airtel, who coincidently had just viewed the films that very afternoon which the kids from International School
had produced for his campaign to launch the Airtel 3G network. He was very very happy with the commercials and asked if we
would produce more of the same for him..

If you saw the types of adverts the national tv is putting out at the moment, you’d understand why when we all heard that we’d get to expose some of our own concepts through a set of adverts for Airtel( a telecom company releasing 3g this year) we were all pretty hyped!

With Jon and Mr.K, a group of us, between 16-18 years, sat and began brainstorming how we’d do it all.

Basically, we had to make several “teaser” ads which will eventually lead up to the main thirty second ad. The ideas didn’t come immediately but taking a look at the suggested ideas from the Airtel Marketing team made us realise that we had to NOT draw inspiration from anything we’d ever seen been advertised over here.

We decided that it would be best to keep phones out of the ads completely, also, a black and white asthetic was suggested and accepted and after seeing the recent editing, we all agree it was a really good call.

Right now we have five teaser clips ready which have already been taken in for viewing by the CEO of Airtel Seychelles…and he’s asking for more now :)

Each teaser basically explores, in an abstract kind of way, a feature which 3g and 3g phones will allow Seychellois to use.

For example, rather than showing that you can download music and ringtones via 3g by showing some guy downloading and listening to a tune (seriously…that’s the kind of thing that’s been shown before), we decided to go down to the night market and we got some great footage of these guys singing some sweet acoustic songs.

We’ve kept the original music from the night and simply black and whited it, and of course some that professional video cutting and compiling and we’ve got a teaser. Each 3g feature’s portrayal varies; for horoscope there’s a cool shot of a Cancer tattoo, with the waves crashing and the wind blowing…something that has to be seen to appreciate!

And I can just remember when, just last week, we sat and started thinking about it all and the ideas came out and Jon looked up and said “But, has anything like…this abstract been shown before?”, “erm…no?”.

His answer to that was “you’ve got to keep it on the cutting edge then, that’s real good!”.

I’ve seen these clips and it looks like advertising just got stepped up boys!

Our project is to produce a short documentary film for the potential opening of an International School on Praslin.

6.45 about the time i arrived at the airport, shortly after Jon and Alex arrived. The checkin was at 7am and we took off from Mahe airport at 7.30. Wow wot a view! green and blue as the plane took off from Mahe and landed in Praslin. The trip forn island to island took 10 mins.

As we walked out of the airport our next task ws to find the car hire guy. We thought we found him, from the way he replied “Hey dude, whats your car hire called?” - ” Prestige” the man replied ” Yeps that’s our guy” Alex said. We went through the whole process of hiring that vehicle, then found out it was the wrong guy as he asked us to pay. In the end the right company was Ostrald.

Emilia who was going to be our guide for the day and show us around, had organised the day for us. She made up a timetabled list of all the people we had to interview and meet. The weather was absolutley horrible, it was pouring with rain, not the beach holiday your imagining eh?

Got into the jeep, to eat at Indian ocean Lodge. Me and Alex stuffed ourselves.

Took the jeep to Janessa, then went to the Vallee De Mai. Slapped on some mosquito repellent and filmed the forest. Got out with some bites here and there. The Vallee De Mai contained unique species of planets such as the coco de mer found only in the Seychelles. There was the praslin bird, black parrot was in the prehistoric forest too.

Chris Gill, a guy with an american accent, was our first interview. He had a chocolate house like in Hansel and Gretal. This guy owned a guest house, with a faboulous view of the sea.

Next shot was with Pierre, a hotel manager. He was relaxed and the film went smooth. Pierre was a seychellois who was from a family of 8, and he had goen to the seychelles colledge to study. He was the luck one, and wanted the same thing for his daughter.

Emilia, an argentinian , her interview was long cause as i had to hold the mic. She owned a guest house. Then, we headed off to the Black Parrot for dinner and interviewed an indian couple called Kumar. That woman thought that eating carrots made you see in the dark. The hotel manger Bart Labuschagene’s interview was cool and the last. Funny guy he was, he quickly ran off get back to business.

After that we headed of to the airport, where we saw some unicef work, about child rights, was touching. The fight took of at 5 pm and off we headed back to mahe, me Alex and Jon. Dats all folks.

A film based on the prospect of opening a school on Praslin requires at the very least, a trip to Praslin to interview prospective parents and take a few shots of what makes Praslin unique from Mahe. So on Monday the 12th we went filming on the second main Island of the Seychelles, Praslin.

Upon arriving we noticed that for the first time in weeks the weather was gloomy, we were however not discouraged. We met our tour guide for the day Mrs. Emilia Vidot who would show us around and introduce us to the parents. After a steady breakfast at the Indian Ocean Lodge we were on our way to the Vallee de Mai.

Vallee de Mai
One of the most beautiful areas of the Seychelles, boasting an expanse of endemic plants and animals ranging from the Latannyen milpat to the black parrot found only on Praslin to the famous and legendary Coco de Mer.

This remarkable plant can only be compared to the tortoises of the country in age and majesty. The plant itself takes around 1 – 2 years to germinate, the plant will grow for 20 years before one can tell if it’s a male or female and the nut takes 7 years to mature after pollination*************.

However once the tree has established itself on a piece of land, its roots will remain on the spot for over 15 years after the plant has died and decayed. This is a good example of coexistence as after the plant has died, its roots become the nesting place for the Black Parrot. After having spending time filming the place, we made our way to our interviews.

Interviewing parents

For the school, we had to interview potential parents, we travelled round the island with our guide Mrs. Vidot and our first stop was Mr Christopher Gill with 5year old sons who save for the school on Mahe opening a space for him would have had to move to Mauritius with his mother for a primary education leaving his father behind.

Pierre represents the average worker on Praslin who, for the sake of their child’s education is willing to give up the little luxuries in life to be able to afford to send their child to the school.

Next was Mrs. Vidot, already has one daughter at the school on Mahe and a smaller child whom she does not want to separate from, fears that her reluctance to forfeit family contact for the sake of education may cost her daughter in the future but feels that a school on Praslin would solve her dilemma.

Then there was an Indian Couple who were very keen for the school to be built as since they are expatriates, they have no family on Mahe so the alternative for them if the school does not happen is to be separated as the mother will have to move to India to be with her son leaving her husband to work on Praslin. Finally there was Bart La buschagne, co owner of Black parrot and Coco de Mer Restaurant and Hotel, whose child is only 2 and he hopes the school is finalized and finished by the time his child goes to school

All in all, a successful trip having the opportunity to film several shots of the locals and of the natural beauty of the island.

I was asked a few months back by Martin Kennedy, headteacher at The International School if I would return to Seychelles and run a series of film workshops with students. Of course I jumped at the opportunity.

The Seychelles islands are the oldest ocean islands on earth, a micro continent, isolated millions of years ago…. 1000 miles off the coast of Kenya in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The natural eco environment here is one of the most diverse i’ve ever seen.
Its my third visit to the islands and most definitely not my last.

I was met very kindly by Steve and his Mini Moke at the airport after a long 11 hour flight with no sleep. Steve works at the school and is currently head of IT as well as webmaster and teacher. We dropped my bags off at his place, took a quick shower and decided to go snorkeling at Sunset Beach. Amazingly clear crystal turquoise waters and so happy that I’d brought an underwater housing for my digital still camera.

My first night was spent with Steve and his wife Gemma in their beautiful home which is set high up on the hillside over looking Beau Vallon beach.
They have an amazing and gorgeous view of the setting sun over Silhouette Island.

After such a hectic few weeks from Freetown to London to Hull and back to London it was nice to sit down with a large vodka and coke and watch the sun go down.

School begins at 8am here in Seychelles so it was an early start for my first day.
Up at 6:30 and leaving the house by 7am.

My first day at school was spent meeting with Martin and the kids. The school already had some ideas for project briefs which would include a series of commercials for national tv, adverting the launch of 3G for Airtel, Seychelles equivalent of Vodaphone, plus a promotional video for The International School who are intending to build and open another school on the neighboring island of Praslin.

At this point in the blog, I’m going to hand over to the kids and let them write about their experiences during the productions.
I may well pop in and write about intersting items from time to time….