After meeting Hung Nguyen and his lovely family at a friend’s birthday party, I found out that Hung was the digital editor for South Asia, BBC World Service and was about to start lecturing in Digital Journalism at Goldsmith University. He was extremely skilled and knowledgeable in a field which I struggle to keep up with and understand thoroughly.
We had a lot to share, and we discovered that our respective filmmaking expertise made us complementary to work as a team. Hung has a strong background in digital technology & editing; whilst my experience is in making documentaries, telling stories and teaching others how to make their own films.
We were inspired, I was eager to learn from Hung and for us to collaborate. And it suddenly clicked, the department for the MA Diversity and the Media at the University of Westminster had recently modified the assessments required on my module: Reporting Diversity: gender, sexuality, age, disability.
My students had now to also produce a one minute piece of reportage filmed on their smartphones, as well as a short documentary. And that’s how I invited Hung to be a guest speaker on my module, to share his knowledge and his enthusiasm for smartfone productions with my students.
We had also discussed the possibility of developing and delivering a smartphone workshop together, and we did!
We devised the smartphone ‘ninja’ workshop, which Hung is now running as the Smartfone School: https://www.facebook.com/smartfonevideoschool
On a sunny day, we delivered it in a basement room, in a wonderful quirky book shop cafe, just off Portobello Market.
A dozen participants showed up. We were lucky to have a mixed group including very young people and older ones filming together and learning from one another in the process.
We had a lot to share, and we discovered that our respective filmmaking expertise made us complementary to work as a team. Hung has a strong background in digital technology & editing; whilst my experience is in making documentaries, telling stories and teaching others how to make their own films.
We were inspired, I was eager to learn from Hung and for us to collaborate. And it suddenly clicked, the department for the MA Diversity and the Media at the University of Westminster had recently modified the assessments required on my module: Reporting Diversity: gender, sexuality, age, disability.
My students had now to also produce a one minute piece of reportage filmed on their smartphones, as well as a short documentary. And that’s how I invited Hung to be a guest speaker on my module, to share his knowledge and his enthusiasm for smartfone productions with my students.
We had also discussed the possibility of developing and delivering a smartphone workshop together, and we did!
We devised the smartphone ‘ninja’ workshop, which Hung is now running as the Smartfone School: https://www.facebook.com/smartfonevideoschool
On a sunny day, we delivered it in a basement room, in a wonderful quirky book shop cafe, just off Portobello Market.
A dozen participants showed up. We were lucky to have a mixed group including very young people and older ones filming together and learning from one another in the process.