Videographing Kitty Van Der Heidjen’s visit to Siem Reap for UNICEF
It was a pleasure to be contacted by UNICEF to make a video of Kitty Van Der Heidjen’s visit to Siem Reap. UNICEF’s communications department are always easy to work with. They have a clear vision of what they want to achieve. They provided me with a solid brief that we went over during pre-production so everyone was clear on what the outputs would be.
Kitty Van Der Heidjen is the Deputy Executive Director of Partnerships for UNICEF. She visited a school in Siem Reap to see how UNICEF has been supporting the life skill development for young people.
In the morning we visited a school and the students made presentations about their campaigns to raise awareness about the environment and climate change.
Kitty was impressed by what she saw. ‘I have been completely amazed by what I saw. In front of me on the podium, I had 12-year-olds, mostly girls, by the way, who were talking about climate change,’ she said.
‘They were talking about what they saw in their community. They were talking about what they saw in their community in terms of how that is impacting their lives. and the need to collect waste and the need to recycle waste,’ she added.
Kitty was also impressed by the tree planting campaign run by the students, ‘They were talking about planting trees and making sure that the trees were well-maintained, so that we could actually do something about climate change.’
In the afternoon we visited the communities to see the positive changes the young people’s projects had created.
‘A big part of what they are doing is not just talking about this in their classroom, but really talking to their parents, talking to other classmates, talking to their communities and making change happen,’ said Kitty.
It was a challenging shoot as Siem Reap was suffering from a heatwave and a severe drought that was taking away vital income from the communities surrounding the school.
‘The village pond, where they would take tourists to go on a boat ride is gone,’ said Kitty.
While the situation is dire, it was great to see youth-led initiatives making such a positive impact in their communities. Hopefully UNICEF can expand their work in this area both in Cambodia and globally and Kitty can mobilise more youth to join the Green Rising movement.
You can see more examples of my work with UNICEF here and here.
On assignment as a videographer on UNICEF's Generation Future project
Nick Sells contacted me to work as a videographer to document UNICEF’s Generation Future programme in Cambodia. Generation Future is a mentorship programme for young Cambodians with big ideas. The project will form part of UNICEF’s celebration of World Children’s Day.
After being selected for the programme, a group of young Cambodians receive one-on-one guidance from accomplished mentors. They also get seed funding to budget for essential project costs and tailored training from UNICEF Cambodia. When they have completed the training, they take their projects into schools to engage other Cambodian youth about their ideas for social change.
The were a broad range of projects including projects about creating school gardens to grow vegetables, oral hygiene and engineering. The video follows the participants training and them delivering the training for their project at a numbers of schools in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The aim in the future is to expand the project, so school children all over the country can benefit.
It was a pleasure getting to meet the future generation of Cambodians. If they’re anything to go by, Cambodia is in safe hands. Hopefully the success of the project will mean that it returns in 2023.
You can see more examples of my videography work here and here.
NGO videographer for UNICEF and LEGO project in Siem Reap, Cambodia
I was assigned to work as an NGO videographer to produce a training video for UNICEF and LEGO’s Build the Change project in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
UNICEF and LEGO have been corporate partners since 2015. Their latest collaboration is the Build the Change project, which will be taught in classrooms across Cambodia. The aim is for Cambodian students to use their imaginations and LEGO to work no a project that expresses their hopes for the future. Photos of the projects are then uploaded to a portal for the project and LEGO aims to share the projects to try and bring about lasting change using the students ideas.
I was asked to make a training video that helped to support the teacher’s book to clearly and concisely demonstrate to Cambodian teachers how to set up and run the activity in their classrooms and share the projects.
The video was a challenge as the project hadn’t been launched in Cambodia and no one had experience of teaching the activity. I worked closely with Bunly and the communications team at UNICEF to find solutions to make a training video that clearly explains the process of running the activity in a classroom, so that teachers across Cambodia understand how to set up and run the activity in their classrooms. The team at UNICEF were very happy with results.
You can watch the video above and you can see more examples of training videos here and more examples of my work as an NGO videographer here.
On Location as a Camera Assistant and Drone Pilot for CNN in Cambodia
Work as a camera assistant and drone pilot on the Cambodia episode of CNN’s Nomad with Carlton McCoy for the second series.
It’s not often that you get a call from CNN at 2pm and by 4pm you’re onset, working for one of the most established production companies in the game. Zero Point Zero are the company behind Anthony Bourdain’s shows. If you haven’t seen the closing gambit from the Cambodia episode of a cook’s tour, it’s a testament to Bourdain’s writing and humanity.
The camera assistant / drone pilot who had travelled with the team from the US tested positive for Covid on arrival, so they needed someone to step in at short notice. Shortly after receiving the call, I was in the back of the van going over the kit with camera team.
On the evening of the first day, the DP tested positive, so we travelled to Siem Reap as a camera team of 2 before flying back to Phnom Penh less than 24 hours later.
When we got back to Phnom Penh the camera operator tested positive for Covid. Fortunately, CNN had flown in a DP from Thailand. We were the camera department for the next couple of days before the original camera assistant and drone pilot thankfully returned to the fray for the last couple of days.
It was an incredible learning experience to work with such an experienced team and a great crash course in lots of camera and lighting kit (and techniques) that I hadn’t used before.
Once again thanks to Nick at Hanuman Films for the recommendation. I look forward to sharing the show once the episodes airs. Below are a couple of drone photos I managed to snap along the way. You can see more examples of my drone videography here. Please get in touch about any video projects you have in Cambodia, SE Asia or the rest of the world.
Working as a videographer for the NGO Kiva in Siem Reap, Cambodia
I spent three days working as a videographer and photographer for the international NGO Kiva to document a series of case studies to show how their work providing with people with loans so they can buy energy-efficient ACE cooking stoves helps to improve their livelihoods.
I worked closely with the team at ACE who are based in Siem Reap. We filmed five case studies with a mixture of male and female loanees who have bought the stove to give a representation of their typical customers.
All of the people we interviewed said that the stove had helped them save money in terms of the fuel costs, which is particularly important as rural Cambodian continues to recover from Covid-19.
Other opinions included that Kiva’s loan product was well-structured and without being able to pay the loan back in installments, they wouldn’t have been able to buy the stove. Other benefits included the ease of use and the fact that it produces less smoke than conventional stoves which is better for their health and their houses don’t get covered in soot.
It’s a great initiative and it was great to see how the stoves had reduced people’s fuel costs to free up money for them to spend on other essential items. Hopefully the videos can be used as a marketing to encourage more people to provide more loans for good causes like this one.
To find out more about the type of loans Kiva offer and how to get involved, you can visit their website.
You can see some of the photographs I took here and for more of my work an NGO videographer, you can watch my reel here.