St Albans cameraman’s iPhone movies giving voice to communities in Ghana
Bob Walters went to Ghana to carry out an iPhone film course - Credit: Archant
A cameraman took his filming skills to Ghana recently to teach environmental workers how to use their phones to report first hand on issues affecting their community.
Bob Walters, of Green Lane, St Albans, runs iPhone movie making workshops and was asked by the European Union and Civic Response Ghana, a natural resource and environmental (NRE) organisation, to make the trip to Accra, Ghana.
He brought iPhones donated by St Albans residents to teach seven organisation workers how to film and edit reports about the policy needs of their communities, which depend greatly on natural resources.
Bob said: “In addition to telling the people in the forest what their rights are, the people I worked with wanted to record what they think about the forest being cut down.
“They believe that giving them a voice will help to protect the forest. What I did was show them how to do that, to shoot, to edit and upload those thoughts, all from an iPhone.”
After spending three days with the team of workers, which included interviewing people across various communities, Bob copied all the footage onto a laptop and left two iPhones loaded with the editing software used in the training.
He said: “This means if they want to go out and shoot a film, they can. This was the equipment they’ used during the training, so they were familiar with it.
Most Read
- 1 Teenager ‘robbed at knife-point' by two males in Hemel Hempstead
- 2 Clarence Park deckchairs banned following council concerns
- 3 Recap: Two crashes disrupting M1 and M25 drivers near St Albans
- 4 Church welcomes gay community event as part of St Albans Pub Pride
- 5 Katherine Ryan and Romesh Ranganathan spotted filming in St Albans
- 6 Man in his 20s stabbed in shopping area in Hemel Hempstead
- 7 Goods worth more than £260 in total stolen from St Albans Co-op store
- 8 Campaign to keep Chiswell 'green' gains momentum
- 9 Hertfordshire grandad who died in A6 Bugatti crash had a 'generous spirit'
- 10 Can you answer these 10 GCSE questions designed for 16-year-olds?
“The Ghana training is a logical extension of the work I do in the UK with charities, mainly in the care sector, helping people learn how to shoot videos and upload them to their websites, all with the phone that they carry around in their pocket.”
Bob is planning similar trips and is looking for old iPhones (4S and above) to use. If you have a phone, send it to iPhone Movie Making, 126 Green Lane, St Albans, AL3 6EU.
