Video Essentials: Audio-Visual Production for Social Change

Video is one of the most popular media types in the world: there are videos on almost all social media platforms, and it is a particularly persuasive way of communication. Video is a creative way to share information that is both engaging and powerful; it is a practice of translating information into moving images and making bite-sized content that has continuity while introducing new ways of storytelling. 

At RNW Media, we are aware of the power that media has in communicating and informing on specific social issues, as well as its capacity to influence people and drive social change. To understand how to reach your goals, it’s essential to know how to craft engaging stories, identify the audiences you are trying to reach, and play creatively with the different platforms available to share the content. To achieve this, our course will help content creators find a way of organizing and thinking about their work that can help in achieving creative and social goals. 

After this training, you will be able to understand the audio-visual medium and master the basics of video production. This course delves into the potentials and challenges of recording and strategies to innovate in content and form. We provide practical tools and techniques that can help turn your message into immersive, compelling videos.  

After completing this training, you will be able to:

• Understand our approach to video creation
• Formulate a production plan that aligns with our production process
• Use the basics of photography to record video
• Use the basics of editing software to edit video
• Develop insight into how audiences consume videos on different platforms
• Explore virality as a tool for social change

Creating video content is one of the most important skills that change-makers of the world need to have today. Living in a world where video content is everywhere, we need to produce powerful content that engages with audiences on a deeper level and has a meaningful impact. Based on a larger methodology of our Core Theory, this video content approach will provide a framework for you to conceive, plan, record, edit, and publish powerful audio-visual material.

Research: At RNW Media we believe that digital media can change the world by influencing beliefs and sharing relevant information with a wide range of people. To make sure that the content we create is relevant and powerful, we need to follow a strict methodology of creation which is based on fact-checked, updated, and critical information. This step is all about asking yourself the right questions: what, for whom, and why?

Planning: We also need to make sure that our process of creation runs smoothly, which means having a clear understanding of the different needs of each project and a structured organization of the resources. A good strategy is like a blueprint, where it is clear what the plan of creation is and the different needs this project has. ​In this course, this step is about learning how to script a story, how to prepare for the shooting, and what resources will the production need.

Scripting: This step is the process of translating the strategies of the planning stage into a grounded story. Both in narrative and visual, scriptwriting is about grounding our concept into a creative plan.​

Recording: This step involves the actual recording of footage; all the different assets we need to consider in the creation of audiovisual content: video, images, sound (music, effects, dialogue) text (titles, captions, credits)​