Youth-IN

UNDP Volunteer Project Officer

Positive Youth! Mikhail Gibbings - The Innovation Prize Winner of the Youth-IN VideoMix Competition This fun loving, charismatic 16 year Mikhail Gibbings is a lower 6th form student at Trinity College East in Trinidad & Tobago. He also plays music, mainly jazz and blues, primarily as a guitarist. Here is his own description of the process of developing the winning video entitled “Finding Love”:

“Before hearing about this competition I had never thought about, much less tried to make any type of film. After coming up with a few ideas, I talked to my good friend Sy-Han Wu who is a brilliant visual artist who is featured throughout the video drawing various things including the chalk butterfly and rose as well as the writing in the 1st scene with the hands. The hands were those of another of my good friends, Kristian Ali, who also helped me and Sy-Han in a scene that involved drawing, over 100 times, an incredibly detailed crying eye which was eventually cut from the final video. Both of these friends helped make this video possible under some hard conditions. In addition to keeping everything from being a job during the process, given the stressful nature of the time lapse/stop-motion mediums which I used, they helped me with everything from start to finish. I could not have done this without them.

The music was one of my favorite parts of this project to make since my passion is music. It is 99% improvised so it took exactly the amount of time to write as it took to record which saved a considerable amount of time and was very fun to do. Our equipment was incredibly improvised also. Especially since we had a budget only large enough to purchase a roll of electric tape and a bottle of hand sanitizer. Our tripod was broken so the camera had to be taped to it. Lighting when it got darker during the 1st scene was achieved using a cell phone. The last scene was shot on an IPod which was duct taped to a tripod and the images on the ground were drawn with old chalk from everyone's houses. The scene which was shot on my front door using an image I alone made in my living room using half a roll of electric tape and a lamp. And the audio recorded in my room by twisting a microphone around the same tripod and almost pressing it to the guitar.

This was a very interesting competition especially since it addressed an issue which is plaguing our society and has been since the beginning of our existence. Maybe we can make a small dent with spreading awareness of the issue even if we can do nothing to stop violence against women entirely. What we can do is not do it ourselves and possibly we can encourage others we know to discontinue this abuse. We cannot make an impact alone. I wish we could do more, but they can, the abusers themselves need to stop, the ball is in their court. It always has been. Stop the abuse. Please."

Finding Love: http://youtu.be/dlmPjI4DRfw

Positive Youth! Lena Taupier is the winner of the Youth-IN VideoMix Competition. Lena grew up in St. Lucia, where she developed a keen interest in the arts from an early age. She was often involved in music, drama, singing, and visual arts, instilling in her a passion for the arts that led her to explore as many different media as she could. In 2008, she began exploring the art of photography, and won second prize in an Amateur Photography Contest launched by the National Conservation Authority in St. Lucia. In 2009 after obtaining a Grade 1 in the CXC Visual Arts Exam, she continued experimenting with new forms of art. She soon developed a strong interest in graphic design and digital painting, and in 2010, won 1st prize in a logo design contest launched as part of a Public Energy Awareness Campaign by the Ministry of Physical Development and the Environment. In 2011, Lena began exploring the art of video editing and directing, leading to the creation of her first video, “End Violence Against Women”, her entry for the UNDP Barbados & the OECS and Youth-IN Video-mix contest. She recently graduated from the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College, and is currently a teacher at the St. Lucia School of Music. In the near future, she plans to continue exploring Digital Arts & Media, and would like to pursue studies in Computer Science in the hopes of building new bridges between technology and the arts.