Students in Action – Leaders of Video/Editing Club

By Liene Salmiņa interviewing Denis Kiryukhin, Grade 9, Georgs Feders, Grade 9

To become active citizens of tomorrow ISR students in Secondary school apart from their academic learning engage in Mission and Service (M&S) groups according to their interests and passions. Georgs Feders and Denis Kiryukhin, two ISR Grade 9 students, are the current leaders of the M&S Video/Editing club. The club has been posting videos for the ISR YouTube channel and Facebook page after three years since its creation. Though the club found its success outside of the school walls very recently, due to the recognition received from their work for the school, ISR has been watching Video/Editing club most passionate participants creating different videos and step by step engaging them in various ways in ISR life. I am grateful both of them Georgs and Denis for founding time during their DLP to tell us what makes them so passionate and excited about the Video/Editing club.

The video club took part in the Independence Day celebration concert with the video about Latvia.

What do you find the most interesting about recording and creating videos?

Georgs: “The most interesting is planning out everything to the last part. The day before the shoot, I and Denis talk for an hour, and we discuss everything that we will need, equipment, people, transport, etc, and we try to be everywhere early, so we can set up everything that we will need, cameras, tripods, microphones.”

Denis: “For me, it is the editing portion. I love spending countless hours putting together the clips into the final product because I get a lot of creative freedom to tell a story. I get to choose what gets into the final cut, the transitions, music choice, visual effects, etc. I just find it so amusing!”

How did the club begin, why did you choose to join it?

Denis: “The club started with George. He was already very passionate about filming before and wanted to start a club, to teach others how to do it. And in the first year, over 10 students signed up, with the first teacher who was Mr Truby, who helped us take it off. He was in charge of the school’s YouTube channel and started posting our videos there, with our first official video being the Dabbing Compilation Video, that neither I nor George can painlessly watch today. Since then we made videos mainly about school activities or celebrations, with gradual improvements in filming and editing quality.”

George: “Denis chose to join the club out of curiosity, as he has never done any extensive filmmaking for anybody. After around a year, he quickly picked up filming and video editing, got his first camera 2 years later, and eventually became the club leader together with me. With a great interest in visual effects, he helped improve the quality of the videos and paid close attention to details where needed.”

What are your challenges and goals in video making?

“It’s always important for us to deliver the highest quality videos with the available resources at the time,” pointed out Denis. “Finding the balance of quality and time taken to produce said the video is always a challenge because you realize that your product will never be perfect, so sometimes you must leave it as it is.” – “All of our videos start with an idea.

Now, we mostly film events that are happening at our school, so the challenge for us is to make it look good and professional. It usually happens when a teacher asks us if we want to participate in it,” said George.

What skills have you learned in this club and how does it improve your life skills?

“Important skills I have learned from organizing this club were planning and time management. It is very important for filmmaking, in general, to know exactly what, where and when you are going to film as well as dedicating time of the day, and this club allowed me to do this in a safe environment, after which I could use these skills for the rest of my life,“ said Denis.

“Working in this club, I’ve heard a lot of very good ideas for videos, and sometimes it boosts my thinking for creating even more good ones. When we started the club, our filming and editing were pretty bad, even when back then we thought it was good. And now watching back our old videos makes us think about how we could have been that bad. We always told ourselves that the next video always has to be better than the previous one and that really impacted our skills, and we just got better and better,” said George.

Do you have any future dreams/goals related to filmmaking?

“I’ve never found myself in a situation in the future where I would focus my life on filmmaking. I am interested in other subjects and things in general, so I haven’t considered taking filmmaking past just being a hobby, even though I have invested a lot of time into it and in a way, got to monetize it with George outside of the school,” said Denis.

Shortly after their story, their latest video came out. This time it is dedicated to ISR Distance Learning Programme. Wishing good luck boys developing their filmmaking skills and hope they will have a lot of exciting ideas to realize in the future!