Here is a collection of content produced during workshops and projects based in the Republic of Seychelles. We have been running projects and workshops since 2003 in Seychelles in collaboration with The International School and more recently with the Seychelles University Foundation.

Seychelles is an island nation, it is located in the Indian Ocean northeast of Madagascar and about 1,000 miles east of Kenya.

Pre release music video for Jah Bless Crew – shot & edited by Cafesociety.org.

We hope these guys do really well and wish them all the best,,, thankyou for looking after us in Seychelles.

here are a few images from the recent project trip in the Seychelles.

A showreel version of the 3 safe technology films has been produced to aid teachers when showing the films in the classroom.
The 3 films will be used as a teachers learning resource for schools in Seychelles.

We’d also like to add a big thank you to all who were involved in the making of these films. Especially the kids who we felt worked very well and enjoyed the experience.

The films produced will also be used as a larger learning resource to be rolled out to schools by the Seychelles National Council for Children. The 3 adverts will also be screened twice a night on the SBC channel.

Seychelles Safe Technology Group have commissioned this series of short informercials to be screened on TV to raise young peoples awareness to some of the dangers on the internet.

Aerial Seychelles

Originally uploaded by Jon – Cafesociety.org.

Well it was a very enjoyable flight and thanks to Helicopter Seychelles for the donation of the free flight.

Unfortunately the lighting was crap and the weather front which soon moved in prevented us from shooting any decent footage for the university docu.

The Jah Bless Crew – Seychelles

Originally uploaded by Jon – Cafesociety.org.

We are so pleased to have met and spent time with all the Jah Bless Crew… big up to you all…

There is so much music talent here in Seychelles waiting to explode onto the international scene,, and i think Jah Bless Crew maybe the first to make it big outside the islands..

The music video we have shot for them may help to progress their talents a few more steps up the ladder towards an international audience.. we hope they make it – big style

Seychelles 2008

Originally uploaded by Jon – Cafesociety.org.

It’s been a hectic four weeks and now we are almost done with our projects and filming. 1 week left to complete !!

Later today we are taking a 30 minute helicopter flight around Mahe to gather some nice aerial footage for the university film, we also still have several interviews to do and attempt to finish the editing of the safe technology films.

We spent the weekend with the Jah Bless Crew, a local group of very talented musical maestros… They have taken good care of us and in return, we are shooting them their first music video…

Friday night is party night… Morgan Heritage are coming to town to perform a one off gig.. I’m sure the island will rock with the rasta vibe and reggae basslines..

Jah Bless

Seychelles 2008

Originally uploaded by Jon – Cafesociety.org.

Thankfully Chris is back to 100% fitness after suffering a bout of the Hershey squirts for 6 days… pitty we can’t say the same for the toilet in our hotel room…

Mission Lodge – Seychelles

Originally uploaded by Jon – Cafesociety.org.

Well we’ve been here about three weeks now, initially enjoying a short 2 week holiday and taking it easy..

But the clocks now ticking and the films we have been comissioned to make need producing. The first film we have been working on is a short piece to introduce the population of Seychelles to the possability of having a university built here on Mahe.

The government have asked us to come over and produce an awareness raising documercial piece to be aired on local tv and also embeded on the Seychelles University Foundation website.

The heat has been unbearable at times, the food for vege’s not always the greatest, the internet has been like watching paint dry but the Guiness export, weighing in at 7.5% surely makes up for the small difficulties we’ve had to deal with.

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.