Ahmet Yildiz

Today I'm talking about a video I made which features participants from all around the world giving the same message.

Back in September 2008 I was asked to help out with a tribute film to a young Turkish man who is believed to have been the victim of an 'honour killing' because of his sexuality. The film went live on my 'JonathanRobinson' Youtube channel this Sunday, and is here:



The film information on the Youtube page here explains more about Ahmet's circumstances and situation, so I just wanted to add a bit about how the video took shape.

Finding participants was very difficult. Requests were sent via Facebook and Youtube. Many guys offered to do the film but the footage finally arriving in my inbox was another matter. At first we really wanted guys that haven't been in any other Youtube films, but again it was hard to get guys who have never done anything like this before to start on such an emotional issue. So most of the participants are people who are regular posters to Youtube anyway who knew how to use the camera and send video files.

Luckily Eduard from Bearcelona had recorded a good half dozen well filmed messages, which lifts the quality of the film.

The next hurdle was making each filmed section consistent in style and shot size. I did a guide on how to film the piece to camera and most of them followed it. The problem was how they sent the footage- I wanted everyone to send it via my preferred file transfer site 'yousendit.com' in the formats requested, but the footage in all manner of file types was arriving via various email addresses and file download services. In the confusion one or two clips may have got 'lost in the system' so unreserved apologies will be due if and when people start asking why I decided to omit them! The truth was I was really struggling to find participants so everyone I could use was used.

Editing it was the easy bit, apart from adjusting sound levels and having to move some shots to centre of frame so the shots all looked as similar as possible. The graphics were created by Eduard from Beacelona, which is his specialist area.

The response has been very good- there has not been any hate comments, the nature of the subject matter means it was a likely viral as far as sharing amongst the 'gay bear' community (currently 20% of views are viral), and interesting to see 29% of the views are from embedded players (24 in total). Also the repeated message gives a clear invitation to viewers on how to repeat a response in the comments...

This mash-up of participants from around the world all taking part in the same film will be something we will see a lot more of (I haven't seen it done before, so please let me know if you have). Its biggest drawback is in the required planning.

It has given me ideas on some future films, which I'm going to start work on soon.