SUARA WORKSHOPS
SUARA COMMUNITY FILMMAKING | WORKSHOPS | FILMS | STORIES | TRAINERS
SUARA COMMUNITY FILMMAKING is additionally proud to be working with some of the best professional storytellers and filmmakers in Malaysia, who provide their time, expertise and love to train community filmmakers in village workshops and the intensive training workshop held at the September festival each year. Finally – and because the sweetest packages come – Suara Community also works with organisations who support the participation of community filmmakers in our training workshops.
Caption: Map showing villages where teams active in the Suara Programme are based. Dec 2016.
On a yearly basis, the Suara training programme takes place over a period of roughly eight months stretching from about March to October.
In this period, three thematic workshops are held in different and mostly rural areas throughout Sabah, focussing on the topic areas of storytelling, film production and video editing. Over each workshop, participants gather for three to four days to work with selected industry professionals who act as trainers and mentors. Most workshops feature exercises where participants experiment and explore the different aspects to filmmaking and, on occasion, produce a short film within the duration of the workshop. A final intensive workshop runs for five days (usually held in late September or early October to coincide with BEFF’s festival weekend) and is a hotly anticipated, high-energy, hands-on process covering the full suite of filmmaking stages, techniques and styles.
Suara Community Filmmaking is open to indigenous and local community filmmakers and admission is free. For more information, contact .
Developing creative skills in film storytelling
Helping participants develop their creative filmmaking skills, and find new approaches to tell their stories in innovative and novel ways.
Building production skills: industry standard training on the use of cameras and audio equipment
Strengthening practical location shooting skills in terms of camerawork, sound recording, and overall coordination amongst a film crew.

Post production: software-based editing techniques
Providing participants a solid grounding in post-production, including the overall principles of editing, an understanding of different editing styles and techniques, and hands-on experience in the use of editing software.
Final intensive workshop
Culmination and distillation of first three thematic workshops on storytelling, production and editing, providing an opportunity for community filmmaking teams to employ all of the skills they had learned in a time-delimited and high pressure environment (similar to that commonly faced by industry professionals), under the constant guidance of an experienced trainer team.