Kenya: Day 12

Pray for:
- a vision that transforms the community
- wisdom of how to implement that vision

What happened:
- went to prestige. did my devos. waited for ken, who didn't show up.
- met with Gwatila to talk about Zuki. plotted out episodes 3-4 and started talking about ep 1.
- went to Kibra Academy, taught pre-production: location lists, character lists, stripboards, prop lists, storyboarding, and shot lists. tom also came out and did an exercise with the kids, had 2 actors try to both get what they want
- Tom dropped me off at Adam's Arcade, walked home w/ my headlamp lighting the way
- had first power outage

Today, Tom came out to class. Most of it was pretty uneventful, but as we approached the end, it was time to say goodbye. Tom is moving to Rwanda after spending a year in Kenya. He's spent quite some time with the kids, teaching and helping them work on Zuki.

Zuki started out as a soap opera written, shot, acted, and produced by the kids. The goal was to produce this and sell it to local TV stations as a way to bring money into the community. But as the project went along, many of those goals got put on the back burner.

One of the problems, was that the kids aren't very experienced with writing or production. In fact, they don't have any experience. As much as we like to believe in gold coming out of the most unlikely places, the reality is that screenwriting, video production, and video editing are difficult. Each one is a craft that needs to be refined in its own right through failure, trial and error, and critical feedback from peers and audiences.

In the mean time, writing duties for Zuki have been mostly taken over by Gwatila and Ken.

Another problem is the lack of resources.

A few months ago, a small group of women pooled their resources and bought the school 8 laptops. Then, one day, they were stolen. This is Kibera. It's still a slum with all the things that come with slums: theft, murder, rape... lawlessness.

So what to do?

My recommendation to Ken was to set up a production company. He could start with 2 or 3 laptops, a consumer HD camera, and some Flip HD cameras. The Flips would be used for training and even shooting some low level programming. The consumer camera could be rented out so that they can shoot weddings, documentaries, or whatever other projects. The laptops could be taken in to Kibera as lesson platforms, but more often then not, it would stay at the office for work.

What this does, is it sets up a goal for the students. After they finish school, they have a place where they can actually envision themselves working. Even if they don't work at the production company, they can rent gear or time on the laptops to produce material and bring money into the community.

So, what then of Zuki? Our goal this summer is to write, shoot, and finish the first 42 minute episode and use it as a platform to sell the rest of the 4 part mini-series, potentially leading to a full 13 episode TV series.

I still need to have conversations about SlumTV.