eVolve Film Project: 'Youth Volunteering - Up for the Challenge?'

eVolve, vinvolved Central London's Youth Action Team decided to create a short film about youth volunteering to tell others just how great volunteering is. Kelly, an eVolve Champion tells us all about it.

In order to make our film a success, Youth Action Team eVolve decided to thoroughly plan the project at our Youth Leadership Residential. We had a general discussion on what we wanted to achieve with the film and key questions we wanted to ask the participants. We also discussed how we wanted to present the video and talked about the location and particular roles that each of us would take.

The actual filming day began with an ‘introductory lesson’ into the use of the filming equipment, provided by Chocolate films. After eVolve had got to grips with the equipment, we did our first interview with one of Volunteer Centre Westminster's trustees and then headed off to Surrey Docks Farm.

At Surrey Docks farm the team took turns in filming, interviewing and being in charge of sound. We interviewed the volunteers working there on the day, the Farm Manager, Mike & Emma from vInvolved Central London and a past volunteer.

Although it was a long day, it was a lot of fun working with the equipment and it was at such a great location as well.

The editing day was the final stage to our film. Again we were shown how to use the editing software and we divided the footage up into two groups in order to use time effectively. We had to cut the footage down to about six minutes and organise how we wanted it to be presented; we also added captions, music, a voiceover and the credits.

When everything had come together it was a real sense of achievement, for the team to watch the final film and know that we had finished it to such a high standard.

Kelly (eVolve Champion)