BECATravels: First Shoot

Friday, June 17, 2016

First Shoot

Today was our first shooting day. We had three interviews: one with the Charles, the clinic’s lab technician; one with Ya-Ya, the Maasai woman who asked Gloria Upchurch and Diane Raleigh to found the clinic; and one with Zena, the midwife. What was so interesting about these interviews was that they had to be double-translated: from Ma (the language of the Maasai) to Swahili, and from Swahili to English. Hassan, one of our drivers, did the translation from Swahili to English, and although he is pretty fluent in Ma as well, we asked a Maasai man to translate from Ma to Swahili.

L to R: Hassan (driver), Brian Favorite (hat), Ivan Ho, Jumana Zahid, Rachael Fitzpatrick and in front, Nick Chiang & Ashley Habr

The students each have specific roles to perform within each video. Our writers, Nick Chiang and Abene Clayton, conducted the interviews. Nick worked with Charles, and Abene worked with the two women. The translators were amazing!

It is always fun to watch the interviewing process. Today, however, it was more fun to watch the audience for the interviews – a group of Maasai men and women, sitting on benches dragged outside from the clinic, so they could have a full view. We all clapped at the end of each interview.

The audience.

On the ride back to our hostel, we spent part of the time brainstorming about how we could make sure that we get correct, word-for-word translations into English for the eventual subtitles. It’s best to do that here, before we leave Tanzania.

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BECA International Video Project

The BECA International Video Project began in 2001 when Dr. Betsy Blosser and then BECA graduate student Gabriela Martínez applied for a grant jointly offered by the San Francisco State Offices of International Programs and Community Service Learning. The purpose of the grant was to design and offer a service learning course that was international in nature. Blosser and Martínez proposed a class in which students would travel to Cusco, Peru, to produce PSAs for Huchuy Runa, an organization that works with street children in Cusco. Winning that grant led the two to offer a two-course sequence entitled, "Media and Community Service" in which students prepared for the trip during a class in the spring semester and traveled to Peru in June to produce the PSAs.

Since that time, the course has been offered 12 times, and students have traveled to Brazil, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Tanzania and Thailand, in addition to Peru. The title of the course has changed; it is now, "Electronic Media and Social Justice I & II." And students do two sets of productions: one, for a local, not-for-profit organization in the spring semester, and one for an NGO in the country they have studied in the summer.

In each case, it is important that students remember that they are "in service" to the respective organization. In part, this means that students produce the video(s) the organization wants or needs for its purposes. Students offer their media skills and, if requested, their advice, but the nature of the production is up to the organization. The organizations receive the videos free of charge, with the knowledge that they are receiving student-produced videos.

It is the intent of this project that students become exposed to social justice issues in the local Bay Area, where San Francisco State is located, and to social justice issues in the country to which they travel. In addition, they have the experience of practicing their craft in a low-resourced environment in the Global South. Usually, this is a transformational experience for the BECA students.