A SKATE CINEMATOGRAPHY WORKSHOP: OUR VISION
We believe that by harnessing skateboarding culture, we can create a platform to teach young people technical, social, and employable life skills that they cantake forward in their adult life. By engaging teenagers through their love for skateboarding we excite them about learning in a designated industry and sow the seed for them to think about that industry as a possible future. We are looking to light a spark for teenagers just as they hit the age of thinking "what do I do next". We want to break the mould of traditional teaching environments and put on a selection of industry specific courses and workshops using skateboarding at its core. Its time to take the classroom to the skatepark and the streets and engage the future generations in locations that they relate to.
This Behind the Scenes video will give you more insight on the 3 days
WHO WE ARE
The workshop is run by a collective of Bristol-based academics, educators, film-makers and skateboarding enthusiasts. We’d had ideas about non-traditional forms of education that had been simmering for a while - and were finally given the time to be realised during lockdown. Therefore, in late 2020, our respective skills and passions aligned to form the perfect recipe for successfully putting on our first skate film workshop.
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Ruth Farrar - SHEXTREME
Founding Director of Shextreme Film Festival and Shextreme Alliance: the world’s first international network training and supporting female adventure filmmakers and photographers. She is also a Reader in Creative Media & Enterprise at Bath Spa University. Ruth’s mission is to improve gender equity and diverse representation in action sports media-making.
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Bella Warley - Campus Skateparks
After volunteering with Palestinian skateboarding charity 'SkatePal' in 2015/16, Bella made the move to Youth Development worker at Campus. There she oversees the youth services Campus offers, various educational programmes including 'Get Your Bearings', partnerships with local community groups and schools. She pushes to create more opportunities and exposure in women’s skateboarding.
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Sim & Dan Higginson - Clockwise Film
Two brothers brought up on a diet of skate film VHSs who transferred their love of filmmaking into a profession. With a combined 30 years of commercial industry experience working in sports and branded content they run clockwise.film with Dan now heading up Campus Media, a new skateboard focused production company.
THE STORY SO FAR…..
Our first course took place in July 2021 in partnership with Vanguard exhibition’s summer outreach programme supported by Vans. Skate to Screen was a free 3 day skateboard cinematography workshop for 14-18 years olds. The course was free to allow it to be as inclusive as possible. During the programme, participants were taken on a succession of workshops that looked at the history of film in skateboarding, camera training on professional cameras, practical workshops, documentary masterclasses and practical filming tutorials. To solidify the learning, the attendees were challenged to create a 2 minute edit featuring a Vans Pro as the subject. The skills they developed were made as transferable as possible, rather than being solely skateboard relevant. Day two was on location on the streets of Bristol where 4 teams were created to run as separate production units, as they would in the industry. The fun didn’t stop there as on day three they jumped into the edit and premiered all of their films at Campus Skatepark.
THE FILMS
Here are the 4 films which the participants made. We were in awe of what they produced with some participants having never picked up a camera before.
Team 1
Team 2
Team 3
Team 4
THE FUTURE
As demonstrated by the results above we truly believe that the format we have created could just be the start of something special in our bid to inspire teenagers with skills in more than just filmmaking. In 2022 we aim to put on 2 more workshops.
Skate to Screen: Mark II
Following the success of this years workshop we would love to again put on Skate to Screen with subtle differences to make it bigger and better than before. We would like to increase the class size from 12 to 15 to enable more teenagers to learn and be inspired on the 3 day workshop. As we move out of Covid restrictions we also plan to make more noise around the screening event at the end of the workshop. This would involve more friends and family being able to come and enjoy the film’s premier screening ultimately giving the participants more ownership of their hard work.
The Photo Edition
The second edition will follow a similar format but with photography, rather than film, at the heart of the workshop. Participants would again learn the technical skills to shoot professional style images along with the social and business skills that it takes to take your first steps into the working world of photography. We would again use Campus as the training ground to learn the basics before hitting the streets with the skateboard pros to complete an industry style brief. The images would then be displayed at Campus in a public exhibition, showing the young attendees what it feels like to achieve this. Skills obtained would concentrate on technical photographic skills, photo editing, printing, teamwork and working with a contributor. Bespoke workshops would be taught by industry leaders.
We don’t intend to stop here
Joinery, carpentry, DIY and concrete finishing are all options of where the curriculum could go next as we replace creative media industries with trades and place them at the heart of the course. Teenagers can learn that practical skills can be turned into jobs through their love of skateboarding.
