By Damiete Braide and Opeoluwa Abiola
Shoot Your Shot Africa has organised a two-day content lab master class on Master the Art of Lighting, Cinematography, and Mobile Content Creation for youths as part of its efforts to provide jobs to the country’s teeming unemployed youths at American Corner 42, Local Airport Road, Ikeja, Lagos last week.
The Resource Persons taught the participants The Art Of Cinematography, Smartphone Videography, Mobile Cinematography, and The Art of Directing.
Adebisi Peters, founder of Shoot Your Shot Africa and Shoot Your Shot Africa Initiative, in his address of welcome, said, in the past three years, the organisation had empowered young creatives in the industry.
Peters, an associate consultant to a communications outfit, a creative and freelance filmmaker said, “ I was a beneficiary of The British Council Creative Enterprise in 2018 when they organized a similar progamme. So far, I have been able to fend for myself and have sustained the craft that I learned during the programme.
“Ever since, my life has changed, and I always want to give back to society with the knowledge that I have acquired. I am willing to give it out for free and that was what started this initiative, Shoot Your Shot Africa, where we empower young creatives for free.”
“From previous training that we had, we have participants that have gone to notable film schools in the country and they are doing well in the Nollywood industry.”
He revealed the number of youths they had impacted with knowledge was over 5000, adding, “Last year, when we held a creative programme for the youths at Yaba Tech College of Technology, over 5000 attended the programme, and, with the number of youths for the two-day programme, “it will get close to 6000 youths that have touched their lives positively,” he added.
He said: “I see a future where these youths will be able to take what they have learned and put them into practice and be able to fend for themselves. In the next couple of years, companies will look for them to do jobs for them.”
“My message to the youths is that, as much as there are distractions on their mobile devices, there are also power and skills that can empower and enhance their lives,” he noted.
Also, Seun Adeleye aka SA, Creative Director, Enhance 360 and co-founder of Shoot Your Shots Africa, added the free training was a programme for developing creatives and to help young people discover their talents, build and nurture their talents where they can begin to create things.
“If they want to tell stories and make the world better, yes they can do it. If they want to create stories and earn money, yes they can do it. Basically, the idea is to build creatives, bring them together, and give them the opportunity to express themselves and expose them to bigger opportunities in the production industry.”
Adeleye explained that the training was called Content Lab, because “it’s where we gather creatives and teach them what to do. We also learn from other speakers in order to have a more robust creative industry.
“I believe that, if you want to empower people, it means that they are lacking certain things and, once you put money first in whatever you are doing, it automatically turns off some people. We want to gather a lot of young people and open their minds to a lot of opportunities that they can key into as things in the country are becoming difficult. If we can empower people to add knowledge to themselves, they can use it to empower themselves.”