The Closing Ceremony took place on 18th August in REX Cultural Centre.

Mr Miomir Rajcevic, the Executive Director, and Ms Evelyn Seubert, the President of the Summit officially closed the Summit.

The documentary crew prepared a 40-minute film consisting of their footage from the Summit workplace, film sets and workshops. It also included an introduction about the 5th Summit and an announcement of the 6th Summit by Ms Evelyn Seubert, the PSAs, the declarations and the participant’s impressions about the Summit.

We would like to thank the documentary crew for capturing the most interesting moments of the Summit and their hard work on producing the final presentation. Their amazing work on putting together the material from the Summit resulted in a fantastic closing ceremony which left all of the participants and the people who came to see what we have done with a very positive feeling. Everyone was left with an impression that this year’s results were much better than the ones of the previous years.

We would also like to thank the Executive and Youth Committee, who were always there to help, advise and support all the crews.

The 6th Summit will take place 1st to 12th August 2011 in Belgrade, Serbia.

See you next year!

Some of the groups were finished with editing their PSAs on the 5th day, so they helped other crews with their assignments, and Poverty, Health and Youth who finished their filming last had to edit their films very quickly.

The documentary crew had some technical difficulties, so they had to spend the last two days editing night and day, with very little time to sleep.

The groups discussed their declarations and they chose the best ones, which were filmed and edited together with the documentary material and the PSAs into the final presentation of the work done during the 5th Summit.

Yesterday evening Ms. Sancha presented her animations and talked about the technical aspect of her work and why she started promoting environmental issues through animation. She told us about how she taught herself animation techniques through trial and error and experimented with different approaches to animation.

You can find her animations on her Youtube profile. Here is her last animation, The Earthday Card:

In the master class we had a nice chat with Ms. Sancha,  not so much about the technical part of making animations, but about environmental problems in general and how to point out those problems to the ordinary people through animation.

For instance, do you think that recycling is the definitive solution to environmental issues? Not necessarily. Ms. Sancha gave us good insight about the subject during her lecture. If you’re interested, you can find more information here.

Here are some photos illustrating the atmosphere at the Summit workspace:

The youth group continued filming their PSA:

The documentary crew started painstakingly shooting the declarations.

In the evening we took our guests for a refreshing walk around Belgrade.

The most interesting shooting of the day took place at Tempo megastore:

And last but not least, here are some silly faces of the Summit:

The 5^th International Youth Media Summit has the honour to invite you to the first presentation of the films that were made over the course of the the last few days in Belgrade. Young Summit participants from Spain, France, Iran, The Netherlands, Germany, USA, Sweden, Poland, Austria, Greece, Canada, Thailand, Hungary, Nigeria and Serbia were working together on the central topics of the Summit: youth, environment, health, poverty, democracy, discrimination and violence. They are inviting you to join them at the

REX Cultural Centre
at 16 Jevrejska Street
on 18^th August 2010 at 8p.m.

There you can meet the delegates and watch their seven films as well as the documentary film about the Summit. Bring your friends.

THE 6^th INTERNATIONAL YOUTH MEDIA SUMMIT
“SHAPE THE FUTURE”
WILL TAKE PLACE IN BELGRADE FROM 1^st TO 12^th AUGUST 2011

This year the Summit has a special guest from Canada. Julia Rogers from Me to We, a social enterprise that challenges traditional methods of doing business by providing people with daily choices that can truly change the world.

During the Summit, she participated in the making of the Discrimination PSA, and she held workshops on youth leadership on the second and the third day of the Summit.

Having finished their script, the Youth group came up with great scenery and started their shooting. The only problem with the scenery was that they were shooting in a room without air conditioning, so they finished the first part of the filming extremely quickly. James Gleason and Evelyn Seubert from the Executive Committee helped them with their advice.

The Democracy group continued drawing their characters. Unfortunately, Bogdan, one of the members of this group had to leave the Summit activities, so the group borrowed the artistic talent of Pedja, Vid and Maciek in order to be able to continue working on their animated PSA. In the pictures below, you can see some of their character designs.

The most unfortunate of all groups was Poverty, who couldn’t start shooting because of the administrative difficulties with getting a permit to shoot in a supermarket. They finished writing their script and agreed on the ending of their PSA. After that they went around city and gathered all the props they needed. They also finished casting which was really easy, since the people from the Summit always want to help. Since they couldn’t work on their own PSA, they helped other groups film their PSAs.

The most hardworking was the Discrimination group, who were at the set and ready to start shooting at 7 a.m. The actors did a great job, so shooting was finished quickly. Although they had some problems with the filming equipment and the editing computer, they managed to finish the post-production by the early morning hours thanks to Milica.

The members of the Health group were busy helping the other PSAs as well as filming their own PSA. They shot scenes for the PSA in a gym and a park, as well as in the volunteers’ apartment. You can see some photos from their sets below.

Anita Sancha’s Environment group made and cut out backgrounds and paper characters for the PSA and then uded Erling Ericsson’s box to film them. Here are some of their photos.

The first association for violence for most people is a gun, so the catalyst of action in the Violence group’s PSA is, you’re guessing, a gun. The hot weather in Belgrade didn’t stop them from choosing a park for their set. They finished filming in three hours, so they were ready to edit by the end of the day. Here are some exclusive screenshots from material for their PSA.

The documentary crew would like to thank and wish a happy birthday to the invaluable and irreplaceable Mr Dušan Pavlovic. Dušan, we could never do this without you. As you can see, the Swedish girls find him irresistible.

The second official day of the Summit started with the groups finishing their scripts. The rest of the groups presented their ideas to the Executive Committee, who helped them finalize the scripts.

The Democracy group chose Orwell’s Animal Farm from the brainstorming poster as inspiration for their PSA. They came up with their idea quite quickly and decided that it would be more practical to make treir PSA an animation. They finished their storyboard before lunch, so they could start working on the drawings in the afternoon.

The Discrimination group used the morning to revise their script, develop their storyboard and make their location and prop lists. They decided to shoot tomorrow morning and they started preparing everything they needed for the shooting. They also began writing their declarations about discrimination, while enjoying great conversations with new from friends from all over the world.

Democracy PSA is not going to be the only animated one this year. The Environment group also came up with a great idea how to use animation to make people think about their issue. They will make their animation with the help of Anita Sancha, the guest mentor from the UK. Mehrad from Iran did a great job designing the main character, a little girl taking care of our planet.

The Health group chose to film their story about two unhealthy guys trying to live healthy lives. They also finished the script and the prop and location lists very quickly. They made all the master plans for the shooting and are very satisfied with the work they have done.

The Poverty group were very creative and they came up with several ideas for the script. In the end, they successfully merged several ideas into one script. With the help of Damianos Voganatsis, an experienced filmmaker from Greece, this group had no problems with pre-production.

After long discussions and heavy brainstorming, the Violence group came up with three different ideas for the script. The Executive Committee helped them choose and develop the best idea.

The Youth group had some problems with agreeing on the ideas for their script, but they managed to come up with a solution with the help of the Executive Committee. Their film is going to be about how the choices the young people make influence their future.

This year the Summit members continued last year’s practice of collecting plastic bottles for recycling.

The documentary crew worked hard all day to film the atmosphere of the Summit and the impressions of its participants.

At the end of the day, everyone was very satisfied with the results of their hard work and we were looking forward to the beginning of filming the next day.

This is the 5^th Summit, and the 3^rd one that is taking place in Belgrade. In the first four Summits, the seven issues were Women’s Rights, Racism, Environment, Health, Poverty, Violence and Youth Empowerment. This year it was decided that Women’s Rights and Racism should be merged into a more general issue – Discrimination, and Democracy was chosen as a new issue.

Most of the participants had arrived for the preparations for the Summit on the 11^th August, and on the 12^th the rest of the participants joined us, so the Summit could begin.

Miomir Rajcevic, Evelyn Seubert and Birgitta Olson from the Executive Committee welcomed the participants and officially opened the Summit. After their speeches, they gave the stage to the Youth Committee members, who presented the program and the Summit activities to the participants.

The Summit activities began with the Expectations circle in which each participant talked about the knowledge and the experiences they expect from the Summit.

After the circle, everyone got to know each other better during the personal timeline exercise, in which they drew and talked about the important events in their lives which led them to the Summit.

When the introduction was finished, the participants started working on the ideas for the PSAs about the issues through brainstorming. Associations about each issue were written on sticky notes and put on a poster. This year, one of the seven international volunteers from the Media Education Centre is focusing on each issue. After the brainstorming about each issue the volunteer in charge of it presented their research on the issue and helped the participants start developing their ideas about the PSAs and the declarations.

In the meantime, the organizers worked hard to make sure everything in the Summit runs smoothly. (Thank you, Dragan and Nikola!)

In the afternoon, the delegates were divided into seven groups, and they started working on the scripts for the PSAs using the ideas from the brainstorming posters with the help of the Youth Committee and the volunteers.

By the end of the day, four groups presented their scripts to the Executive Committee, who helped them answer the questions they had in mind and solve the problems they had with scriptwriting.

The day ended with a walk to Ada Huja, where the Summit family took part in the Green Window festival, celebrating the International Youth Day.

During the camp, there were several different projects. One of those is the Guernica project, which was to reconstruct the famous Picasso’s Guernica using only natural material, collected from the nearby woods. It is still work in progress, and this is how it looks up to date.

Another part of the workshop was the 48 hours film project. There were four teams of up to four members, and the leader of every team drew a piece of paper out of every one of 3 boxes (character, genre, object), and the teams then had 48 hours to come up with ideas for the films, shoot and edit them. After those 48 hours, there was a screening and everyone voted for the film they liked the most. The winner was the film called “The Innocent Lily”, which you can see among the other films if you click the link above.

The workshop was quite successful, because all the planned films have been completed in time and because everyone had a great time. We all want to come there again.

Near Mitrovac, there are quite a few very interesting places we visited. The “Carpet Meadow”, the viewpoint above the river and the lake, the Kusturica village are only a few of them. Here are some photos.