And that’s a wrap! Some of our young supported housing residents had a great learning experience creating a powerful short film that we shared with leaders and change makers this month. Their film was a moving insight into young people’s situations, times spent homeless and struggles with mental health.
And we were proud to premier the film at our event to mark World Homeless Day and World Mental Health Day.
One of the young people who took part in the project, Karl, said: “I already made music videos for a YouTube channel so had some knowledge of setting up the camera, colour corrections
and After Effects software.” Karl, who was born in the UK and grew up in France, returned the UK earlier this year. He said: “I was street homeless for about three months before I was offered a place with YMCA DownsLink Group. Since I’ve been back, I’ve been watching videos on YouTube on how to do editing.”
Our film project began with a hands-on workshop in Hove led by videographer Mi Elfverson. The young people explored the fundamentals of filmmaking, including lighting, camera positioning and storytelling techniques. We also discussed how to handle sensitive topics that could be raised during the interviews, as the people being on camera would have been through difficult times.
After the workshop, the team embarked on two filming days in Hastings and Crawley. Another one of our filmmakers, Kerem, took part as the person being interviewed on the beach at Hastings. The wind proved challenging to recording voices and Karl and Kerem learnt techniques to overcome this.
Kerem said: “I felt quite relaxed as I knew what to expect because I’ve been involved in photoshoots before through my volunteering with the charity Band of Brothers. My favourite part of being involved in the film project was the time we spent filming on the beach.
“I also learnt a lot lighting and how to use a bounce board to reflect the daylight back as well as making a grey light change to a warmer yellow.”
Other young residents from our supported housing were happy to join in as ‘interviewees’ in the film and to give their thoughts on how things should be made easier for young people who are homeless or struggling with their mental health.
Karl and Kerem then spent two days with videographer Mi on the editing process to shape the final cut. Kerem said: “I had never done editing apart from editing clips on my phone so it was good to learn more about it.”
Karl said: “I enjoyed the editing. We had different visions for the film so we had to work together to find something we were all happy with. As our brief was to create a short film, we had to select just small sections from the young people’s stories – and they had so much to say that would have been good to share.
“I feel very proud of what we produced and I’d like to thank Mi for all her time and what she has taught me.”
Kerem said: “After taking part in this project, I’ve been told that I have a good speaking voice and that I’m very articulate. So I’m thinking of investigating if there’s any work I can do as a voiceover actor or doing a podcast.”
Karl added: “For me, this experience has opened another door. I’d like to be working by myself and doing all sorts of filming such as promotion videos, about food, adverts and other filming in the future.”
