Project presentation

La Préfass is an association promoting an innovative project in the small town of Laroin, Pau. The project was chosen from among many others and funded by the European Union because of the ecological choice of materials and the way in which the sustainable and the social are merged into a single program.

The project is called "La ferme Guilhembaqué", which stands on the former farm run by owner Marguerites Guilhembaqué, who decided to donate her estate to the municipality. Then, they had to finance the project from its own resources.

The project calls for the construction of four different spaces:

• The old farmhouse and will be used for social gatherings and the organization of events
• A space for craftsmen
• The old forge where farmers will sell their produce every Friday
• A hall, built architecturally like the Zome.

The buildings will be constructed using eco-sustainable materials, such as hemp, while retaining certain characteristic features of the old farmhouse, such as the old doors on which the old engraved coat of arms can still be seen. Another feature that will be kept intact will be the buildings built with stones taken directly from the river and characteristic of the place.

Making a video as part of an Erasmus+ project

The task of the group, who chose the association La Prefass, was to produce an informative video about the future project. The goal was to inform the citizens of Laroin, especially those who had the most doubts, about what the project really is and why it is actually good for the community. The group worked on the project over three days.

First day: Meeting with the association, explaining to us what their objectives were, who the video was aimed at, what values they wanted to put forward, showing us the structure and what they are dealing with. In the case of Prefass they showed us the design prototypes as the final structure will be ready in October 2023, this was more than useful to be able to get the right information and be able to put it into the video.

Filming

Once the meeting was over, we spent the afternoon thinking about how to make the video and, as it was Friday, we took the opportunity to talk to Luc, and get his testimony as a farmer who sells his produce in the square and will soon have a place to do so, namely in the third space mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Loreto and Coco, on our return, organized a workshop to give us tips for the next day, the day of filming, which was very useful as we needed a general introduction and some advice on how to record, frame and not get lost in little mistakes like remembering to set the focus manually to avoid losing focus when something unintentionally passes in front of the camera and our interviewee loses focus.

Second day: Filming. The day began with a meeting with the mayor of Laroin, Bernard Marque, who welcomed us in the best possible way in the town hall. We introduced ourselves and he showed us, with the help of photos, paintings and architectural drawings, what the farm looked like before the project, and how certain elements have been preserved (e.g. the doors). We filmed scenes of all the drawings and equipment, so that we could use them in the final video.

Next, we interviewed the mayor inside the future Guilhembaqué Farm, as he showed us where the future spaces would be. After interviewing Ariane Payen, representative of La Prefass, we shot some scenes with drones under Coco's supervision and with Loreto.

Third day: Workshops. We were explained some of the functions to be used when editing a video, and we took the opportunity to work on a project and focus on the idea. The last day consisted solely of editing the video, under the supervision of Coco and Loreto, and in the evening we showed our work at the cinema evening, which we were very happy about as the mayor was also present to see the final work.

Evaluation

Throughout the project and the making of the video, everyone collaborated in different ways and each was given a lead role, but we often ended up overlapping with our own work and that was good because we had a good balance.

Editing was perhaps the most difficult part, because as we were all new to editing applications, we had to get used to it. But everyone contributed in different ways, some of us working on the audio and cutting interviews to match the sound of the microphone below, others working on the cartoons introduced into the video, some on the sound and others on the behind-the-scenes video.

Although it may seem that editing is a one-person job, working in such a group was useful - everyone had a small part to play, and at the end, when the final cut was made, everyone was able to give their opinion and contribute ideas on scene selection to make the whole thing better.

Despite the fact that we were all beginners, it was great to see how each of us had contributed in their own way to the final project, and that in just 3-4 days we had learned to use programs such as explee.com and DaVinci for editing, to recognize camera angles and which ones to favor depending on what we wanted to frame and the message we wanted to get across in the video.