This was my first experience at UEL working with an external client. Having The Samosa to answer to made me feel under a bit more pressure than usual, especially as I took on the role of project coordinator. Having to make sure that progress was made taught me the importance of deadlines and teamwork - also of delegating the right person for the right job - and most importantly of reliable and accurate communication within the group. This will help me in my future career. 

I come from a very international family. My father is French Canadian and my mother is Brazilain. I was born in Portugal but moved to Lincolnshire in the midlands when I was 14. Since then I have also lived in Hull and I now live in London. And yet some people are surprised when I say that the only passport I have is British, and that I consider myself as a true Brit. 

This is in spite of the fact that I have suffered racism on multiple occasions - usually when speaking either Portuguese of French, both of which I speak fluently. Nothing too dramatic but undermining all the same. For example once at an ATM in Boston Lincolnshire. I was around 17 and speaking to my mum in Portuguese on the phone when someone from the local estate in their 30’s asked me why I didn’t "go home."

Thinking about times like this made me want to explore language with my film clips: the way that identity is sometimes defined through language and the prejudice that this can lead to. Events like the one described above for a time made me ashamed of speaking anything but English in public. But now I’m also proud of my Brazilian and French-Canadian culture, as well as being proud to be British. Identity is something you choose not something you are given. I’ve earned the right to be British, so that is part of who I am.

Lincolnshire may not be, but Britain as a whole is multicultural. After all, when we even mention the UK, we are talking about four different nations with four different languages. But these nations can be distinct as well as combined identity - and the same goes for me.

Yes English is the main language of the land, and everyone should at least learn to speak it, but by no means is it the only language spoken in the country, and why should it be? But more recently, with Brexit, I began to notice that some people used British identity to take against ‘foreign’ languages more than before. For example there was the well-reported case of the ‘Happy Brexit Day’ poster put up in a Norwich tower block in February that told people to speak English. The reason it had so much publicity was not only because it was xenophobic, but because it was written it terrible English! So it was thinking of things like this that made me decide to explore language and identity as my subject.

The process of making the final film was methodical. After a set of discussions led by Anwar Akhtar of The Samosa, me and my fellow students worked with Natalie Marshal, and film maker Victor Rios. Ideas were bounced back and forwards till we knew what films we wanted to make.  The team then worked on their films individually and brought them back to Victor for feedback. Once they were approved, we had to decide how to use them. In the end we decided that we would recruit people to watch and react to them and then edit the films together with the reaction shots. Originally we wanted more of an audience for the films, but because of coronavirus we decided to get three people who would react to all five videos.

As coordinator I gave each team member specific jobs appropriate to their skill set. These tasks included handling release forms, booking equipment, casting actors, and scheduling the shoot. On the day of the shoot I was one of the two that set up the room. I then took charge of the camera while someone else asked the audience questions about what they had seen. Another member of the team set up the microphones and lights. 

The order of events was this. Each person arrived at the allotted time and was asked to sign a release form. A crew member would then attach a wireless mic to them and we would start filming. In between each video the viewer was asked questions, with some questions pushed that bit further in order o get the most interesting answers. This had to be done after each of the five videos. Once all three guests had watched all five films and been filmed reacting to them, it was a wrap!

We then viewed all the footage to make sure it was all good in case we had to reshoot anything. The next stage was the editing. Various versions were submitted for feedback, and I had the job of adding subtitles where they were needed to help people understand. My job was then over and the project was handed over to Zuleika so that she and Simche could get the final website together.

Being able to work for an external client like Anwar Akhtar who is a writer, journalist, and theatre and film producer, had me excited and somehow cautious at the same time. It was an exciting to work for an external client for the first time. 

The first stage of pre-production required me to work independently, researching my subject to find a minute’s worth of film clips that would communicate what I wanted them to. This meant I had to think about my identity and identity in general very hard, which took courage for me. The process taught me how important critical thinking is. This means being able to judge material objectively, and not just from a personal point of view.

My first idea was to explore what it meant to identify as a ‘Christian’. However the problem with this subject was that it was not inclusive enough because there are lots of people do not have a religion and therefore would not be able to have an informed opinion. I therefore decided to concentrate on racism towards black people as it is something that almost everybody has an opinion about. What this process taught me was how important it is to brain storm lost of different ideas, and how you need to be willing to change your mind if necessary.

Although I’m happy to say that I have not suffered from any obvious racism myself, I am aware from watching and reading the news that some young black men are stereotyped as being up to no good and therefore sometimes picked on by the police without reason. The use of stop and search and the way that it is used disproportionately on young black males has been a controversial issue for many years now. As lately as October 2019 a Home Office report found that more people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds are likely to be stopped despite not having committed crimes.

Having chosen my theme I spend many hours on the internet looking for the sort of material that people would react strongly to. One of the videos I chose was a scene from the American comedy drama Dear White People featuring a white policeman treating a white guy the same way as they often treat young black men.  Part of the skill I had to learn was how to choose the precise clips to use, which in this case meant one clip of 35 seconds, and one of 25 seconds. Once I had the clips all together Victor Rios taught me how to edit them into a one-minute piece. 

I then had to come up with four important questions that I wanted my audience to answer once they had seen my film. My questions were: (1) What did you just watch? (2) Do you think the police force is institutionally racist? (3) If you were in a situation and you witnessed a black person being racially abused in public, would you put a stop to it? (4) How do you think the approach to racism has changed - by the public and the state - in the last ten years if at all?

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My favourite question was number one. Although on the surface it looks like the least interesting question, the fact it is so open means that people can interpret it in different and sometimes surprising ways.

On the day of the shoot I helped our project coordinator Lucas by collecting the camera and other kit from the equipment store. I then also helped set up some of the equipment in the classroom where we were filming. During the filming itself I helped out by using my phone and Lucas’ phone to film additional background  cutaways of people’s reactions in case we decided to use them in the final edit to get different angles.

Working with external client The Samosa helped me in may ways, but particularly with my video editing. Being responsible for the final cut tested the skills I had already, and enabled me to gain some more. This will take me forward in further education and eventually my career. 

Working with an experienced film maker - Victor Rios - also gave me production skills that will be extremely valuable in shaping me as a young journalist. These skills included how to manage and organise a production schedule, and other members of a production team.

The subject I chose to explore through my film clips was feminism and the many misconceptions people have of it. Why? Because I frequently find myself at the receiving end of these misconceptions. Being an outspoken feminist constantly has people questioning me - “You’re not one of those are you?” - as if it is a bad thing to fight for equality across all genders. Feminism has been a part of my identity for years and has grown to be something I’m associated with by my friends and family. Feminism represents a fight for those whose voices often go unheard, which is why it is still of central importance in our society. But too often the voices feminism aims to amplify get drowned out by the media’s misrepresentation of what feminism is. More often than not the version of feminism we are told about dismisses feminists as people who cry wolf and make mountains out of molehills, as represented by the sort of person who says that cleaning is anti-feminist, or that engagement rings denote ownership, or that a “snowman" should be called a “snowperson”. 

But this does not reflect the real concerns of feminism, which instead include vital issues such as the period poverty suffered by homeless women; economically-disadvantaged schoolgirls; and poverty-stricken women in the developing world. And feminism doesn’t just raise issues it aims to solve them too, for example in this case through fighting for the provision of free sanitary wear. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is just one more of many injustices rooted in gender inequality that feminism is fighting to end. To put it simply, I chose this subject so as to end misrepresentation of feminism so that people know what it is really about.

As well as finding my own film clips, my main role within the Identity project was as film editor. My job was to tackle the post-production by piecing together the story we wanted to tell out of the clips and reaction shots that we had gathered together. This meant taking over three hours of footage that we shot on the day, and extracting what was most important without misrepresenting the people who took part.

Before the day of the shoot I had to edit together my own one-minute compilation of video clips. This then became my segment of the material shown to the invited audience on the day of the shoot. To get the clips together I searched YouTube, where I found that Good Morning Britain was a rich source of material because of the way that Piers Morgan regularly finds himself in arguments with “feminists”. My thinking was that his strident approach would provoke strong reactions and therefore lead to even stronger discussion afterwards.  On the day of the shoot I helped keep everything flowing smoothly by getting a schedule together for the order of filming, and generally took a key role within the overall organisation.

Then when it was over I began the task of editing. This meant working closely with Victor in order to make sure that the video was as effective as possible. My first job was to piece together a coherent story; and a structure that was easy to digest and which could be used to generate discussion around the subjects that we had all chosen to explore. Once the structure was in place I completed the more "cosmetic” task of adding things like title cards; captions; sound effects; and a consistent brand to run through the video. During this process I sent multiple drafts to Victor and Natalie, and had an in-depth online meeting with Victor to discuss how to make the film better. 

Overall the project was complex but satisfying and I hope that those who watch the film will argue about the issues in it in a way that makes them understand the world they live in better than they did before.