All the films which were made by students from The International School and National College for the Arts were shown yesterday at the School as a mini end of project film festival.

It’s always a good buzz to see the kids reactions while they’re watching their films on a large screen in front of an audience. I think every single student felt proud of what they had achieved in such a short space of time.

We think the content is tremendous and by the end of the week we should have uploaded all the short films to our Cafesociety.org gallery

click here to view the videos on youtube.com

It’s not stopped raining for almost three days. Paradise is beautiful but when you can’t even leave the hotel beacuse of the mass downpour it gets a little upsetting.

I just heard back from friends in the UK today saying how nice the blue skies were. Please can we have some in the Seychelles..

So just to remind you of how nice these islands can look in the right weather, please click the link below and enjoy a true paradise :-

Enjoy the pictures..

We are currently preparing the final edits with the kids from The International School & National College For The Arts.
The project is coming to a close now and we have the film screenings for parents, students and invited guests on Tuesday 7th June @ 4pm at The International School.

The TV station is coming down as well as the newspaper and a selection of invited guests who have been instrumental in organising and funding this project.

The kids have produced 10 short films in total over a period of 14 days. They range in themes from environmental, political and cultural to healthy eating & beach life. The quality of work produced has really impressed us. The committment from the kids at the very start of the project led us to believe the end content would be something very special, and it is…

We arrive back in the UK late Thursday 9th June and as soon as we have a stable internet connection we will upload the kids films to Cafesociety.org website for all to see.

I hade a great time on the past 3 days we spent with John and Murray, working on the project. I learnt a lot especially on editing the movies we made. We used a program called Adobe Premiere. The program is great to use and it is very experiencing. It was great fun that I won’t mind doing it again. Actually I’d love to do it again because I learnt a lot.

Carlos

Before the visit of Jon and Murray, I hadn’t got the slightest clue of how to operate such equipment, so this has really been an experience.
I had expected it to be very difficult and complicated, but to my fortunate surprise the equipment and we had good, devoted instructors to do the filming, especially to witness the reaction of people to a film crew and a professional camera, and also to hear some of the answers people gave. I think we also made many acquaintances with the people we interviewed and talked to along the way.

I am delighted to have participated in the workshop as it has proved knowledge for something I knew nothing about, and it was great fun. I hope I, or something like it happens again.

Peter Purvis

It was great fun, but was very tiring because along with all the fun came a lot of hard work, the programme was easy to use and came naturally and we got to meet some interesting people when in search of interviews.
 
Working as a team, I think we finally managed to stumble onto something very powerful…

A message to the waiting world.

Justine Manley

I was in group three of the café society project; a film making experience.

Overall, I made two full movies with film and editing and cut and edited a third. It was all good fun; I took to being a cameraman and filmed all but one of the interviews four our groups main project, this project was the best I made and was very proud of the professional-looking, finished product.

It was a documentary about the life of a Seychellois person from the perspectives of different people. The whole experience was great fun and I enjoyed all the sectors of the production and found that the equipment was easy to use once we were shown the basics. Jon and Murray were both great help and patient, they made the experience very enjoyable.

Charles Blagbrough

The digital workshop was lots of fun and hard work, it’s amazing how many things happen behind the scenes of films we watch every day, although it was hard to find people to cooperate with us, in the end we created a masterpiece, learning to handle the equipment although we messed up sometimes, overall it was really good fun and I wouldn’t mind doing it again.

KC Rose

I think that the digital workshop was a great experience, it was actually a lot of fun; from people telling us off to people thinking they’re God. I’ve learned a great deal of new things which will help me to make a movie at some point in time. Our film came out better and stronger than we expected it to. We did want to have a comedy but our idea started to change. It all worked out in the end and we are very happy with the results. Overall I think I was GREAT!!!!

Angeleah Torrin.

This film making café has been very educational and lots of fun. The equipment is of a very high quality, but also very simple to use once you understand the basics.
 For our group we planned on making a comedy type of small movie, but ended up making a movie of with a very strong message. The digital arts café was a great experience.

Stephen Ernesta.

When Jon and Murray came, I didn’t know how to make a movie, now I have the skills necessary to make a masterpiece.

I liked using the camera and interviewing the participants of our films. We made two films during the course of three days. One was about Seychelles in general and the other concerned our school. This has been an awesome experience dude. Jon & Murray were great and I hope they can come back.

Ian Pillay, year 10.

I enjoyed the project very much. It was very exciting working with the pro cameras and finding out how a film was made. I liked the film and acting because it was great fun and the people we worked with were extremely helpful.

The past few days spent with Murray and John in the filming project have been a success,we gained a lot of experiences and good examples of how to produce a film, interviews, documentry and we enjoyed it.We are students of visual  art Polytechnic, Benjamin,Dino and Egbert.

The experience of one of the students on the project…. 

hello all

I am one of the students doing the digital projects with murray and jon weve been working with them for two days and this post is being posted on the last day with them. Its been fun with these two and my experiences are probably going to help me later in life (plus we get all this new brilliant equipment)

last night at around 4:30 we went to give an interview to a piece of living seychellois history, a man named kantilal jivan a well known man in the seychlles capital he is a historian, a top conservationist and has many numerous awards from science academys and unversitys without having a formal education(makes me think twice about my own education).

I hope that anyone reading this will eventually see the movies we poduce and will enjoy them.

Today started off badly with a crash in the town centre in our hire jeep. the car in front slammed on and unfortunately i was too close behind to avoid a collision.

The police were on the scene within minutes which we found quite surprising considering their general laid back approach to things.

It also turned out that our hire car was failing to display a valid insurance certificate on the windscreen so the police officers decided to take us ‘down town’ to the central station until we could prove that the car was insured. I also had to complete a very indepth statement.

We called the hire company and explained that we were being held at the central station because the car appeared not to be insured.

The company sent a guy over with the valid paperwork and we were released.

The last two days since I started this workshop has been WOW.  I’ve learnt how to opperate different types of video-camera,digital-camera and new computer skills.

I’ve been with Jon the most and he’s great.

Joining this workshop has been a good way to get out of the class and do some interesting stuff which may come into good use in the future.

Murray has also been great and his been teaching us the audio stuff to go with go with our movies that were making based on seycheles.

We’ve also done some sight seeing tothe missionlodge at Sans Sousi, the Market in town and the Botanical Garden. On Tuesday 24 the GAME (Gibson,Alex,Marcel,Eddy) group got the chance to interview Mr Jivan, an absolutely amazing man who had quite a lot of stories to tell us .

So far we have gotten 2 beautiful videos of the Sunrise and the Sunset.

This is the first camera and video recording experieces that i have ever had. We have done a few interviews and made a few short recordinggs for our documetory on the seychelles.
We have also learnt to use the equipement which is the cam recorders and the digital cameras.
The teachers have shown us the different kinds of shots and angles that you have with film making.

Our first real shot was an interview with the owner of Temoolgees department store, Ms Oliarji, where we asked her about tthe government and the problems of dealing in the seychelles. Our second one was the sunset at Beau Vallon beach where we setup equipement and took the whole setting we the speeded it up and a beautiful sunset can be seen in about a minute and a half.
Signing off a would like to thank Jon and Murry who has been patient at all times and we are all greatful that they took the time to teach us what they know.
Marcel  

It was our first day with the kids and after just one day
I think the films the kids produce are going to be very special.

The kids are all super keen and have already planned what they are going to shoot.

This afternoon i went with a small group into town to interview two people who where suggested as been potentially very good people to interview.

One of the guys, an 84 year old was very excited to see us. he got out his scrap books of all the people he’s had as guests at his home and these included the Queen and Prince Phillip, Mother Terresa, Omar Shairif, the list is endless. He showed us the photos to prove it.

We’re gonna go back after school tomorrow and interview him properley. we were a little unprepared question wise when we saw him today.

We start at 5:30am tomorrow with a surf shoot at sunrise on George Harrison’s and Peter Seller’s old beach. A different group of kids that want to show in their films some of the fun stuff teenagers do out here.

Another good film I’m thinking.

After a long flight we arrived into the heat and humidity of Mahe.

Nina kindly collected us from the airport and delivered us to our rather plush accomodation for the next three weeks.

After unpacking we took a saunter down to the turquoise waters and cooled off..

It’s the eve of the project trip to Seychelles and we’re just relaxing with a whisky and coke round at Murrays in Stoke Newington.  Plane lifts to the skies Friday eve around 9:30 and drops into the indian ocean Saturday morning.

We’ve even organised a venue to watch the FA cup on Saturday afternoon.

Our multimedia workshops with the International School on Mahe are scheduled to start on Monday morning, so enough time to adjust
to the new surrounds and climate.

“Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, far from African coast, a bunch of islands offers to its visitors a range of tastes, smells and visions at the crossroad of Asia and Africa. Whatever you are looking for – white sandy beaches, rocky mountains, luxuriant forests or plain deserts – you’ll be fully satisfied.
If your fascination relates to snorkelling in coral reefs, trekking, or birdwatching in a unique nature, you will enjoy what you’ll discover there.

Away from commercial ways, those countries : Madagascar , Seychelles , Mauritius and Reunion Island , thanks to their isolation, preserved among their inhabitants an incomparable kindness.”

We have less than a week to get all our prep ready for departure to the Seychelles on Friday 20th May.

Cafesociety.org will be working with the International School in Victoria – Mahe for a three week period to produce a selection of short films through a series of practical new media workshops.

It’s been hectic planning the project in between our current contracts and projects with schools in the UK.