Video for Change: A Guide For Advocacy and Activism - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745324126 ISBN 13: 9780745324128

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2005

Synopsis

--This is the first ever comprehensive practical guide to human rights and video campaigning-- Pictures from Abu Ghraib showed the power of the amateur image to grab the world's attention. The Asian tsunami, caught on camcorder, brought home the reality

About this title

About the Authors

Sam Gregory is the Programme Director at WITNESS, a project that trains and supports activists around the world to use video safely, ethically, and effectively to expose human rights abuse. He also teaches on human rights and participatory media as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and is the co-editor of Video for Change (Pluto, 2005).

Gillian Caldwell is a campaigner, lawyer and CEO at Global Witness. She is the co-editor of Video for Change (Pluto, 2005).

Ronit Avni is a filmmaker, human rights advocate and the founder of Just Vision, a non-profit organisation that documents and creates media about Palestinian and Israeli grassroots leaders involved in peacebuilding. She is the co-editor of Video for Change (Pluto, 2005).

Thomas Harding is the best-selling author of Hanns and Rudolf (2013), and the co-founder of Undercurrents, Britain's first video news service. He is a leading voice in international video activism and has written for the Independent, Guardian, New Statesman and New Internationalist. He is the co-editor of Video for Change (Pluto, 2005) and The Video Activist Handbook (Pluto, 2001).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Video for Change

A Guide for Advocacy and Activism

By Sam Gregory, Gillian Caldwell, Ronit Avni, Thomas Harding

Pluto Press

Copyright © 2005 WITNESS
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-7453-2412-8

Contents

List of Figures and Tables, vi, 
Acknowledgements, vii, 
Foreword Peter Gabriel, x, 
Introduction Sam Gregory, xii, 
1. Using Video for Advocacy Gillian Caldwell, 1, 
2. Safety and Security Katerina Cizek, 20, 
3. Storytelling for Advocacy: Conceptualization and Preproduction Katerina Cizek, 74, 
4. Video Production: Filming a Story Joanna Duchesne with Liz Miller, Sukanya Pillay and Yvette Cheesman, 122, 
5. Editing for Advocacy Katerina Cizek, 168, 
6. Video as Evidence Sukanya Pillay, 209, 
7. Strategic Distribution: Reaching Key Audiences in Innovative Ways Thomas Harding, 233, 
Glossary, 277, 
Resources, 281, 
Appendices, 
I WITNESS Video Action Plan, 284, 
II WITNESS Footage and Tape Description, 301, 
III Sample Personal Release Form (Short-Form), 305, 
IV Sample Personal Consent and Release (Long-Form), 306, 
V Preproduction and Production Checklist, 307, 
VI Script Formatting for Video Documentary, 309, 
VII Costing-Out Your Video Distribution Strategy, 310, 
Notes on the Editors and Contributors, 312, 
Index, 315, 

CHAPTER 1

Using Video for Advocacy

Gillian Caldwell

In 1995, I was working as an attorney doing civil rights work in Washington, DC. A friend returned from a trip to Siberia, where he had been investigating the illegal trade in tiger pelts. Undercover, and in the midst of discussions on a sale, the traffickers had offered to sell him women. He asked me if I wanted to help him do something about it. I said I would spend some time after-hours researching the issue and see what I thought about getting involved.

Two weeks later, I resigned from my job as a civil rights attorney and camped out at his office, telling him that I would wait tables if necessary until we raised the money to support our proposed campaign into the illegal trafficking of women for forced prostitution out of Russia.

And so, my adventure in video advocacy began. Just over two years later, we released the film Bought & Sold: An Investigative Documentary About the International Trade in Women, a documentary based on our investigation, which received widespread media coverage, including BBC, CNN, ABC, New York Times, and Washington Post — and significant results internationally in terms of policy change.

Bought & Sold integrated an unusual mix of video. There was undercover footage shot with miniature tie cameras in meetings with the Russian mafia — gathered while we posed as foreign buyers interested in purchasing women to work as prostitutes. And there were conversations with women around the world who had been forced into the sex trade. Additional interviews with counselors and advocates helped frame the key issues surrounding trafficking and conveyed recommendations to policy-makers.

What made Bought & Sold influential internationally was that it was ground-breaking in the information it revealed in a powerful visual medium. At the same time it could be used in screenings before a broad array of audiences, including law enforcement, NGOs working to meet the needs of women, girls and women at risk for recruitment, and a range of policy-makers worldwide.

Video has several strengths that convinced us that it was worth the considerable time, energy and resources required to integrate it into our work. We recognized that video could elicit powerful emotional impact, connecting viewers to personal stories. It can illustrate stark visual contrasts and provide direct visual evidence of abuses. It can be a vehicle for building coalitions with other groups working on an issue. It can reach a wide range of people since it does not require literacy to convey information. It can help counter stereotypes and assist you in reaching new, different and multiple audiences, particularly if broadcast is a possibility. And it can be used in segments of varying lengths for different contexts.

But even given its strengths, video isn't right for every campaign or organization. For one thing, it is a very time-consuming and potentially expensive endeavour. Additionally, at WITNESS we often talk about whether or not an issue lends itself to being conveyed convincingly with images and compelling human stories. Are the images accessible, or are the risks and difficulty of obtaining them obstacles you may not be able to overcome? When assessing whether to use video, even more important than the strength of the images themselves is the power of the stories they help convey. A video is only as powerful as its ability to touch the people that watch it, to connect them to the experience of the people portrayed in the film, and to motivate them to get involved to make a difference. Do you have access to the people and the stories you will need to make your video compelling, engaging, and powerful?

This chapter provides a brief strategic overview of some of the key themes echoed throughout this book and helps you begin to analyze whether and how you may integrate video into your advocacy work. I will draw on my own experiences between 1995 and 1998 in launching the video advocacy campaign on trafficking in women, and on the experiences of many other social justice video advocates around the world. I also recommend you look at the "WITNESS Video Action Plan" (see Appendix I) for a more formal step-by-step, question-by-question guide to the process of incorporating video into your advocacy.

* * *

So, to begin with, when we talk about "video advocacy," what do we mean?

"Video advocacy" is the process of integrating video into an advocacy effort to achieve heightened visibility or impact in your campaign. "Advocacy" is the process of working for a particular position, result or solution. For example, in an environmental context, you might advocate to prevent the construction of a sewage treatment plant in a poor neighborhood. In a human or civil rights context, you advocate to stop a woman from being stoned to death for infidelity to her husband or to press for a change in laws to enhance women's rights. In a community context, a group may mobilize support for the construction of a new school.

All these efforts represent different kinds of advocacy, and each advocacy campaign requires its own analysis of several important factors to lay the groundwork for success. For example, who is in the best position to help you get what you are looking for? How can you be most influential with that audience? What arguments, stories or evidence should you present? At what time and in what place?

When considering whether or how to integrate video into your advocacy work, the process can be broken down into five key steps:

• Step 1: Define your goals.

• Step 2: Talk to other people who have worked on the issue you want to tackle. What has worked, what hasn't, and why?

• Step 3: Analyze your style and strengths, and identify your allies.

• Step 4: Define your audience and think through how to communicate your message to them — your format, style and the "messenger").

• Step 5: Decide on a level of involvement and start planning production and distribution.

Step 1: Define your goals

By 1995, trafficking in women for forced prostitution had been going on for centuries, but trafficking out of Russia into Asia, Western Europe and the US was a new and growing business in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We knew that written and video exposés on trafficking from Asia and Latin America had been generated, but noted that they had not received adequate attention from the US government or the international community. We hoped that a campaign focused on an area of strategic interest to the US (that is to say, the former Soviet Bloc), and the introduction of powerful undercover investigative video, would garner fresh attention for the problem on a global level. Our first goal, then, was to address a fundamental ignorance about the scope and dimensions of the human trafficking industry, which was valued to be as lucrative as the international trade in drugs and guns. We wanted to educate government and a broader public about the issue.

A second related goal was to campaign for laws and law enforcement responses to trafficking that would ensure that women were treated fairly in the legal process. For example, we wanted to be sure they were offered adequate support in a language they could understand, that they received a stay of deportation and time to consider whether to provide testimony against the trafficking rings, that they were offered witness protection where necessary, and that they received assistance to meet their basic needs in terms of housing, counseling, health care and other support once trafficking was identified as the underlying problem.

A third goal was to increase funding to support locally based organizations in Central and Eastern Europe that could provide education and support to women at risk, or already caught in the trafficking system.

All these goals were thoroughly analyzed and understood before we began our investigation and our filming — and we referred to them continually throughout the process to be sure that our original aims coincided with our newly gained perspectives and experience and that we were gathering compelling arguments for making the changes we were recommending.

The first question to ask, then, when thinking about a video advocacy strategy is: What problem are we trying to resolve, and what solutions will we be proposing? For example, in a human or civil rights campaign it is important to determine early on whether changes in the legal system are required or whether, instead, the campaign is about addressing the failure of the system to enforce or comply with laws already on the books. In most cases, there will be national as well as international laws, treaties and conventions that prohibit the abuses you have identified, and the focus of your campaign will be on documenting and highlighting the violations taking place and pressuring the responsible parties to take action to stop the abuse. In other instances, the solution to your problem may not lie in the legal system but in community solidarity or collective action, or in persuading particular individuals that it is in their best interests to behave or act in a different way. It is in the process of bringing the human experience of a situation or problem to life, and in presenting it powerfully to key audiences, that video can play an important role.

Step 2: Talk to other people who have worked on the issue you want to tackle. What has worked, what hasn't, and why?

As I mentioned above, our early research revealed that several other documentary films had been produced on trafficking, with a focus on the experience in Southeast Asia, but that those films had not generated the responses advocates were looking for on a national or international level. Perhaps cynically, and perhaps realistically, part of our assumption was that a documentary video that highlighted the experience of Caucasian women trafficked from Russia would generate greater public attention and visibility within US government circles, and that once we got their attention we could educate regarding the broader global problem. We also noted that there was a relative lull in advocacy on trafficking within the US at the time.

It is very important to get a sense of the "landscape" surrounding the issue you want to address. Very few successful advocacy campaigns occur in isolation — many individuals and organizations, often from different parts of the world, play a role in influencing the course of events.

Community groups and nongovernmental organizations often fail to collaborate as effectively as they could or should — whether because of competition for scarce resources, personality differences, ego, or political differences regarding recommendations for reform. Wherever possible, learn from the work that other advocates are doing and find ways to reinforce each other with the video material you produce. The more tactical and collaborative you are in your thinking around problems and solutions, the more likely you are to succeed — and the more allies you will have developed who are vested in using your video to help advocate alongside you. In our case, we researched and communicated with dozens of key organizations already working around the world to address the problem, and we learned from their experiences. We involved them in the process of producing our video by conducting on- and off-camera interviews and soliciting their advice on key recommendations for reform. The inclusive process of production we developed helped to solidify their connection to the video as a resource they could use to support their work.

Step 3: Analyze your own style and strengths, and identify your allies

It is important to be as objective and clear-sighted as possible in analyzing your style and strengths. In our case, we were a small, underfunded start-up. There were two of us working together on a very ambitious, multinational campaign — and my colleague was only working part-time on it. We had no reputation or experience in the national or international community on the issue. In fact, we didn't even have nonprofit status in the US and our sponsor for tax purposes was the Marine Mammal Fund, a group with a history of working on trade in endangered species. Needless to say, it wasn't easy to establish our credentials for conducting an undercover investigation on the Russian mafia!

It was therefore clear from the outset that we would need to take a highly collaborative approach to our work. There was no sense in reinventing the wheel, since so much important policy work and analysis had already been done. And we needed credible allies. The point was to draw on the strong groundwork that had been done by international coalitions such as the Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women. We found the international community very receptive to our requests for interviews and information, and rarely came across what can sometimes be described as "territorial" behavior among nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. Your approach is very important, and of course influences the response you receive.

The strength of the material we researched, the insatiable media interest in it, and the added credibility we gained by recruiting several well-placed experts as part of our advisory committee, opened the necessary doors and landed us in the autumn of 1997 with the ear of top advisers in the Clinton administration in the US, when we helped them craft the first multi-agency task force on trafficking. We were also able to work with our colleagues in the movement to draft a resolution for the late Senator Paul Wellstone that became the basis for a bipartisan Trafficking Victims Protection Act that passed the US Congress in 2000. And we became the only NGO partner for the Open Society Institute/Soros Foundation on a regional initiative in Central and Eastern Europe to train, fund, and support NGOs to work on trafficking.

What helped make our distribution campaign internationally successful was our commitment to involving a range of key players throughout the process — they reviewed scripts and rough cuts and their voices were heard and reflected in the final product, so they felt a sense of ownership and began using it in their work.

It is very important at this stage of your thinking to assess where your strengths lie. Questions like: Are we a formally organized NGO or a people's movement for change? Do our strengths lie in our access to grassroots communities that can be mobilized, or do we have credibility and access to the "halls of power"? Do we use a litigation- based approach, a popular protest strategy, a lobbying strategy, or some combination? Do we work best in coalitions or independently? Who are our key allies?

For the more established organizations, a style and reputation may precede you, which will help define your approach to using video in advocacy. If your constituency is grassroots, consider drawing on that strength to produce something that can be used to educate and activate a broader audience. If you tend to have more influence with well-placed officials and governing bodies, consider developing a piece that would educate, inform and motivate them toward your intended goal. Ideally, you can outline a video production that will speak to multiple audiences. No matter what, research well, collaborate as much as possible, and while you should have a series of clear, achievable goals in mind, don't forget to dream. In the end, our accomplishments exceeded our wildest expectations.

Step 4: Define your audience and think through how to communicate your message to them

In our campaign on trafficking, we had numerous audiences and allies in mind. We wanted to reach a global international public, women at risk for recruitment, organizations working to educate people about the problem, government authorities around the world, and intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations.

It is very important to be clear about your key audiences from the beginning of any campaign for change, and this is certainly no less true where you are planning to integrate video. One of the basic premises of communications strategy is that you need to have a clear, concise message, and you have to identify your intended audience before you can craft the message. Having a clearly defined audience makes it easier to shoot and construct a compelling argument using video. But remember that some of the most powerful video advocacy campaigns successfully speak to multiple audiences at once, or in a sequence using a variety of materials for different settings. Analyze your situation carefully to determine how to proceed.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Video for Change by Sam Gregory, Gillian Caldwell, Ronit Avni, Thomas Harding. Copyright © 2005 WITNESS. Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745324126
• ISBN 13: 9780745324128
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344
• Editor: Gregory Sam