Dean Ferguson with the Witness Program Participants

The Digital Media Lab in 305 Dodge Hall in the School of the Arts is typically quiet and still in late July, but this year the lab was buzzing with activity as Columbia University's School of the Arts hosted, for the first time, a crash course in digital filmmaking for human rights activists.

In collaboration with Columbia's Interactive Design Lab (IDL) and Witness, a non-profit organization committed to grassroots advocacy by providing video equipment and training to local citizens in their efforts to monitor and prevent human rights abuses, the School of the Arts designed the course to be a sort of filmmaking bootcamp to encompass both production and intensive post-production. The week-long course brought together activists from five of Witness' partner organizations here in the U.S. and trainers from Witness and Columbia's graduate and undergraduate film programs.

"The idea behind Witness is to democratize the power to create your own media tool that is part of a human rights strategy, and the idea behind this workshop is to democratize the use of editing facilities as well as cameras," said Sam Gregory, program coordinator and head of training for Witness.

Witness, founded in 1992 by singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel following the Rodney King incident in Los Angeles, partners with organizations that defend human rights here and around the world. It has joined with 150 organizations in 47 countries, placing video cameras in the hands of local human rights activists and training them to use technology, including computers and editing software. The footage produced by Witness partners has been used in courts, by the United Nations, in documentaries, by the news media and by organizations to conduct grassroots education.

Three Columbia film students participated in the workshop, which was the brainchild of IDL's two principal investigators and directors, John Kelly and Andrew Lih. As technical advisors to Witness, the two were happy to bring the activists and trainers to Columbia to utilize film editing equipment during the summer break.

"The training was a natural add-on to our main collaboration with Witness," said Kelly, "There's not a lot of activity here in the summer, and it's a shame to have all that firepower and not use it."

Graduate Film Students Show Witness Partner Editing Tips

Added Lih, "To have technology sit around is a wasted opportunity, but to have someone use it for something really important is what the School of the Arts can give," referring to the motivation behind IDL's work with Witness that began more than a year ago.

According to Kelly, what started out as dinner party conversation on his part became a commitment to an organization whose work is considered important and relevant to the IDL's own mission.

"Witness is concerned with raising the awareness of human rights abuses and that represents things that technology can make possible," said Kelly.

Lih added that there is a good deal of synergy behind IDL and Witness, "We understand the one-man-band type of coverage where you are videographer, the editor, the person responsible for the whole video," he said.

Elaborating on the mutual benefits of the collaboration, Kelly said, "Witness produces video content from around the world that is interesting and that allows for our experimentation on the Internet 2." He explained that although the Witness website reaches a worldwide audience, its video is the size of a postage stamp. By running the video on the Internet 2, IDL can provide broadcast quality exposure to all the universities that have access to the Internet 2.

The workshop provided Witness with an opportunity to take its training to the next level. As Gregory admits, the organization has not done much training in post-production to date because of limited resources, and so having access to state-of-the-art editing equipment was a real advantage for the eager participants.

"Simply shooting video isn't enough. When you know how to edit, suddenly your shooting improves because you know what shots you're missing. It rounds out the whole process," said Gregory.

Graduate film student Carina Tautu explained that editing is an important part of the film process and will prove to be an asset to the participating organizations.

"Being from Romania, I understand there is a need for this type of work," said Tautu. She participated in the program to aid the activists and demystify the film process.

Working with Tautu on sharpening her film editing skills was Heather Muse, a member of the partner organization Kensington Welfare Rights Union (KWRU), a Philadelphia-based group dedicated to organizing welfare recipients, homeless, working poor and others concerned with addressing economic justice in the United States. Muse says the organization plans to capture human rights abuses and present the documentation to the United Nations, using a video camera provided by Witness.

Columbia's IDL studies the design of emerging, interactive media. IDL is a collaboration between the School of the Arts and the Graduate School of Journalism.