Spectacle Launches New Half-Day Training Course

Spectacle is launching a new online video training course! The Day/Night School will run half-day training courses designed for academics, researchers, journalists from all over the world!

The online classroom

Works in Any Time Zone 

Responding to demand ranging from Idaho to New Delhi, Spectacle has designed a video training course at times that work in almost any time zone, and so available to pretty much anyone around the globe – live! 

This course offers half-day training on Tuesdays and Fridays for 4 weeks – that’s 8 half-days total. The initial courses will run from 15:00-18:30 London Time, which means you can enjoy it as an early morning class in Los Angeles, or an evening class in Bangalore. Subsequent courses will shift in time for availability including Australia and Japan. 

Learn storyboarding

Designed for PhDs, Academics and Researchers

When it comes to making videos, the just ‘point and shoot’ method only works if you are extremely lucky. From inaudible audio, to interviewees that clam up as soon as they see a camera, to takes ruined by continuous autofocusing – the pitfalls are innumerable. 

This course is specifically designed for academics interested in incorporating video into their research. Whether you want to integrate visual methods into your research or produce videos to disseminate your outcomes, you will learn all you need to know to turn your research into a short film.

If you don’t have the budget for expensive filming equipment, won’t have a film crew, and need a surefire way to make a final project where the mistakes don’t distract from the message – you need our training course. Spectacle has been working with and training academics in filmmaking for decades so we know the unique needs of research filmmaking. From video techniques to editing and visual storytelling, this course will provide all the skills you’ll need. 

Camera techniques and settings

Skills You’ll Learn

The first 4 sessions are on videography, and the last 4 focus on visual storytelling and editing. You can do all 8, or just choose to do the first or second half.

  • How to operate a camera
  • How to get best results from smartphones 
  • Storyboarding and visual storytelling
  • Talking heads and interviewing  
  • Strategies from filming to editing 
  • The basics of editing using Adobe Premiere Pro
  • Learn about editing as a data analysis method 
  • How to produce engaging videos based on your findings
Learn professional standard editing in Adobe Premier Pro

In the Classroom 

All courses are taught live on Zoom. The course content is split into manageable 45-90 min modules. Each module builds on the last and will cover key concepts and offer practical exercises to develop your skills and confidence in technical and creative aspects of video making.

CONTENT 

The first 4 sessions will cover all aspects of filming, including sound recording and camera techniques. The last 4 sessions will focus on visual storytelling and editing in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

FLEXIBILITY

If you have to miss a session, you can access the recordings for 30 days through private links. You can choose to attend only the filming half or the editing half of the course, or buy the whole package and take a gap between the two halves. 

PRICE

£480 for 8 sessions 

£280 for 4 sessions

Previous Clients

Spectacle has delivered successful training workshops for numerous educational organisations, NGOs, and private companies including: Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Anthropology Department, Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Edinburgh University, Birkbeck College, UCL, LSE, Oxford COMPAS, University of Zurich, as well as hundreds of social researchers, journalists, scholars, and video marketers who have found our methods engaging and inspiring.

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Remote Participatory Workshop in Rostock, Germany

Does the Truth Still Lie in Rostock?

In August 2020, in collaboration with the Rostock based group Lichtenhagen im Gedächtnis , Spectacle developed and ran an archive-based two-day participatory workshop. This project is part of the run up to the 30th anniversary of the Rostock Pogrom in 1992.

The project’s events, which were held online due to the pandemic, included a public premier of a new fully German version of ‘The Truth Lies in Rostock’. The screening was followed by a Q&A with director Mark Saunders, which focused on the participatory production process through which the film was created. For more about the process or the archive footage, see the bottom of this post.

This screening also launched a unique workshop designed to connect Rostock’s past, present, and future.

The Truth Lies in Rostock

This 1993 film depicts the events which occurred in August 1992, at the Lichtenhagen estate in Rostock, in the former East Germany. Over the course of three nights, a fascist crowd assembled. The police withdrew as the mob petrol bombed a refugee centre and the home of Vietnamese guest workers while 3000 spectators stood by and clapped. 

The film uses material filmed from inside the attacked houses and interviews with anti-fascists, the Vietnamese guest workers, police, bureaucrats, neo-nazis and residents. Through these perspectives, a story of political collusion and fear unfolds. 

Thirty years later the question has become, how can the memory of the ‘Lichtenhagen Pogrom’ help fight new waves of fascism in Germany? 

Participatory Video Workshop

This two-day participatory video workshop offered the chance for young adults from Rostock to dig into the film’s questions about the nature of fascism, racism, and the roles and responsibilities of the city, state, and federal governments. 

By working with archive footage and filming a live commemorative demonstration, the workshop was designed to bridge the past and present issues of racism and anti-racism in Rostock. The workshop’s second aim was to offer new skills in media and filmmaking to these young adults. 

The workshop launched the weekend of August 20th. A group of young Rostockers were split in two groups, one working with archive footage, and one filming the live demonstration.

Before the workshop began, Spectacle digitized a portion of our extensive archive footage from 1992. The material selected was of the anti-nazi demonstration that followed the pogrom. This group worked with Spectacle to edit a new short film from the material. 

You can see their short film here: Demonstration 1992

Meanwhile, the rest of the participants went as a small group to film an event which echoed the archive material – the Lichtenhagen Commemorative Bicycle Demonstration. This group of participants learned about filming techniques and edited footage from the demonstration into a short film which focused on the landmarks which have been built to commemorate the events thirty years before. 

You can view their final short film here: Demonstration 2020

Read more about the project from the German perspective.

The Aims of the Project  

  • Provide a safe space for reflection about the events in Lichtenhagen, specifically for different groupings that were involved in the events at the time. This includes, but is not limited to the Vietnamese community in Rostock, some of whom had to fear for their lives and lost their homes in the events, and Rostock residents, some of whom were appalled at the unfolding events and other who were cheering at, or maybe even participating in the attacks.
  • Provide skills training in workshops, teaching participants how to use video cameras, record sound, and conduct interviews.
  • Potentially encouraging dialogue between diverse groups and contributing to a more sustainable community through a process of reconciliation.
  • Preserving the oral history of the 1992 events by creating Zeitzeugen (witness/bystander) documentation for future generations, through the production of a series of films including original as well as new footage. These footage shot in these workshops will be made available online as well as on DVD and can be used to educate younger generations.

The Archive 

Spectacle has an extensive archive of footage from Rostock between 1991-93. The archive grew out of a programme of participatory video workshops run by Spectacle. After the unification of Germany, all the East German media outlets were taken over or replaced with Western media. Spectacle’s series of open workshops were designed to establish an independent, community-based media group in Rostock and to document the effects of unification on the city.

All participants in the workshops were beginners, with little experience in photography or filmmaking. The practical exercises concentrated on how the unification was changing the physical urban landscape. At the close of the first sessions, each participant was interviewed about their experiences as well as their hopes and fears of “Die Wende” the unification of Germany.

One of the objectives of the workshops was to establish a community media group to that end we formed the Jako Media Co-op. Just six months later Jako E.V. and Spectacle would rejoin to make ‘The Truth Lies in Rostock’.

The production process created over 200 hours of footage that did not appear in the final edit of the film. These scenes of daily life in 1991-1993 have become an historic archive of the city at that volatile time. The aim of the 2020 project was to re-work and revisit this archive together with a new generation of Rostockers who were not even born at the time of the pogrom.

Watch The Films

Demonstration 2020
Demonstration 1992

Read past blogs about Spectacle’s Rostock projects here.

Visit our vimeo channel to see examples of Spectacle’s past PV work.

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Remote Participatory Video in Medellin, Colombia

Spectacle has been at the forefront of Participatory Video (PV) practice and community engagement for more than thirty years. We continue to innovate and during the last 9 months we have developed a model for delivering Participatory Video workshops remotely.

Reinventada, a participatory video project for LSE

The Project

Spectacle is currently a partner in a research project developing a groundbreaking remote PV method. The research project Reinventada is funded by the London School of Economics (LSE) Knowledge Exchange and Impact Fund (KEI). It investigates the condition of displaced and migrant women, especially mothers and heads of household, living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of Medellin (Colombia).

The Garcia sisters, Celmira and Elicenia

The research was initially planned to produce a participatory documentary on women’s ‘right to the city’ in Medellin. However, as soon as the pandemic crisis exploded, being well aware that women are amongst the most affected groups of people during emergencies and disasters, we were able to create a remote participatory project that investigates the impact of COVID-19 on participants’ everyday lives in poorer areas of the city. 

The Beginning

Started in May 2020, the project was originally planned to be conducted face-to-face, but was forced online due to the pandemic. It is led by dr. Sonja Marzi, the Principal Investigator from the Department of Methodology at LSE, as well as supported on the ground by two Colombian partners: Maria Fernanda Carrillo, a sociologist and filmmaker, and Lina Maria Zuluaga, anthropologist.

Dr. Sonja Marzi, Principal Investigator of the project

The aim of this research project is to create a documentary filmed and edited by the women themselves to depict their daily lives during the pandemic. 

Online Participatory Video

We began initially by training the participants on how to best use web platforms and available technology. We set up weekly ‘Zoom’ meetings that served as an online space for workshops on filming techniques and how to use their smartphones to capture high quality video. Zoom meetings became the workshop space where all production and editorial decisions were discussed and made in consensus. The production meetings are chaired by participants on a rotating basis. We discussed film content, planned shoots, reviewed and critiqued the footage together, and collaborated on editing the final documentary.

Demetria, chairing a meeting

The groundbreaking project has successfully adapted Spectacle’s Participatory Video methods and techniques to an online environment. The short documentary Reinventadas was released at the end of 2020 and premiered in film festivals in 2021. 

Collaborative editing process

Watch the Final Film

Visit our vimeo channel to see examples of Spectacle’s past PV work.

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Video Production Enhances Research Impact

Are you an academic researcher, PhD student, PostDoc fellow seeking to boost the impact of your research? Do you wish to improve the originality of your research proposals in humanities, science, arts, social sciences? Why not include a video outcome in your funding application?

Video workshop at Sheffield University

Other academics are already using media production to enhance the impact of their research in many ways. Video can be used either to monitor the research process and report research results, or it can be integrated in the research methods as a strategy to collect original data that can be easily analysed and disseminated. Spectacle has long experience in training academic staff in how to achieve quality video outcomes for their investigations.

We have already organised bespoke courses for anthropologists and social researchers of Edinburgh University, Cambridge University, Open University, Social Research Association, Amsterdam University, academic staff at Birkbeck, Comms departments at Oxford University, Cambridge University Press, King’s College as well as the Macular Society. All gave us excellent feedback.

Together with practical skills and confidence, they went away inspired and excited by the potential of incorporating video in their academic work in order to improve the impact of their scientific communications.

We offer a range of options to train you in video making, from weekend courses to three-day participatory video workshop, to bespoke training programmes addressed to staff or research groups.

Please visit our Training page or write to us for quotes and info at training@spectacle.co.uk

If you are interested in our work visit Spectacle homepage
Like Spectacle Documentaries on Facebook
Follow SpectacleMedia on Twitter

For information on Spectacle training courses

To get the latest news from Spectacle, sign up to our Newsletter

Video Production Enhances Research Impact

Are you an academic researcher, PhD student, PostDoc fellow seeking to boost the impact of your research? Do you wish to improve the originality of your research proposals in humanities, science, arts, social sciences? Why not include a video outcome in your funding application?

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Spectacle video training for academics and researchers

Other academics are already using media production to enhance the impact of their research in many ways. Video can be used either to monitor the research process and report research results, or it can be integrated in the research methods as strategy to collect original data that can be easily analysed and disseminated. Spectacle has long experience in training academic staff in how to achieve quality video outcomes for their investigations.

Recently we have trained anthropologists and social researchers of Edinburgh University, academic staff at Birkbeck, Comms departments at Oxford University, Cambridge University Press and King’s College. All of them gave us excellent feedback.

Together with practical skills and confidence, they went away inspired and excited by the potential of incorporating video in their academic work in order to improve the impact of their scientific communications.

We offer a range of options to train you in video making, from weekend courses to long bespoke training programmes addressed to whole department staff or research groups. Please visit our Training page or write to us for quotes and info at training@spectacle.co.uk

If you are interested in our work visit Spectacle homepage
Like Spectacle Documentaries on Facebook
Follow SpectacleMedia on Twitter

For information on Spectacle training courses

If you would like more information on Spectacle sign up for the Newsletter