Working on a film

“I’ve been working on editing a film recently which from time to time I really enjoy. Helping people through this medium, to gain a deeper understanding of something I’ve witnessed and amplifying the voices of people rarely given the opportunity to share their perspectives is a privilege.

This time, I wanted to bring together the experiences of the teachers we’ve been working with across Europe for our project, A Creative Approach to Bravery and Resilience in education and what I noticed was that most of our teachers were more comfortable speaking in the own languages. No surprise there and so I conducted interviews with responses in Finnish, Dutch and Italian.

None of which are languages I speak.

Perhaps you might have tried to edit video material, tricky even in a language you do speak, and in a language you don’t, it was really tough as I tried to work out how.

I created a transcript using AI, then a translation tool to switch to between English, and each of the languages of the interviews – Italian, Dutch and Finnish, then back again to English to check it all still made sense, looking carefully at cadences and pauses knowing that I don’t understand grammar or sentence structure in the 3 languages I was working with.

It was slow and painstaking and I worked with the commitment and patience of the rather brilliant Naomi KP – Your Favourite Photographer and Film Maker who at times would crack up hysterically to ease the concentration while we were so focused on each word and each breath by our interviewees it literally made our heads hurt.

Finally our European partners Fanny Matheusen Kaisa Kinnunen and Luciano at CESIE ETS checked the translation. I have it on good authority that we need to change just 1 word in the final cut of our 10 minute film.

I’m pleased with the results and grateful to Marcel Hedman who encouraged me to carefully look at how AI can support the work of those of us focused on social impact on my residential programme as part of the Clore Social Leadership training programme.

Having our teachers in the film speak in their own languages and celebrate the diversity of European languages is something that makes this film much stronger and it wouldn’t have been possible in this way without the tools at our disposal.

Usually I am a bit suspicious of AI and how it is embraced often without critique and often without addressing valid ethical concerns.

In this instance, I can honestly say it helped and supported our work. I’ll share the film in December after it has its first screening at our conference in Leuven.

Let me know how AI has helped you in our sectors – or if you’ve even dared to go there!”