Practice makes perfect (hopefully)…
LAST MINUTE CHANGES!
DOC. CAMPUS MASTERSCHOOL #4 | LEIPZIG | DAY 1 | PITCHING TRAINING
Today’s Tutors:
We arrived in Leipzig quite late last night, due to foggy skies and a delayed Ryan Air flight, so we were tired and groggy by the time we got to the hotel. But we were quickly energised when we saw a whole bunch of our classmates outside the entrance – it was like our own little welcome party.
At breakfast this morning everyone was discussing the “P Word”. This week’s campus is all about pitch, pitch, pitch. By 3.30pm we’d already pitched our project twice, and received super helpful yet quite differing feedback. It seems we have the art angle nailed, but the universal story is yet to be conveyed. Later this evening we will have our one-on-one meeting with the Queen of Pitches, Sibylle Kurz – we’ve got 45 minutes to pick our pitch apart and figure out what the driving engine of our story is. We’ve got it in our heads; we just need to get it into the commissioners’ too.
Hopefully tomorrow we’ll be one step closer to engaging everyone in Paa Joe’s story.
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Documentary Campus Round 2! Homework time…
Hello all!
So, tomorrow we’re off to the 2nd stint of the Documentary Campus Masterschool and we need help with our homework.
Can you think of any alternative titles to the film?
We’d love to hear your suggestions!
My Visit to Paa Joe: Thursday
Today pretty much consisted of packing and saying my goodbyes to the guys at Paa Joe’s workshop. Paa Joe drove me to the airport as he wanted to say good bye from there and then I boarded my plane home.
This was a really fantastic trip that built so much on my first visit. We are formulating many more ideas with clarity in terms of what we want to achieve from this project and how we are going to make it happen.
Watch this space!
My visit to Paa Joe: Tuesday.
It was another early start to the day. We set off for Akuapem Hills, two hours from Accra in the beautiful hillside. Paa Joe grew up surrounded by this amazing landscape until he was about 16. It was such a great place to visit and we met some of his old family friends, including a chief who had known him since a child.
I feel very fortunate to have seen the place where Paa Joe grew up, these very humble surroundings in the hills of Africa, and I feel honored to know the man he is now, making his mark on the world and being so respected in his craft.
After this, I went back to Pobiman and stayed near Paa Joe’s workshop.
My visit to Paa Joe: Monday.
This morning was a bit more relaxed a start than yesterday. We headed into Teshie where Paa Joe introduced me to some of his apprentices and their workshops. Everyone was very respectful of Paa Joe and it made me realise just how admired he really is. Most of the coffin makers I met had trained under him for ad ten years. One man even said that he only had the workshop he was now using because Paa Joe had introduced him to the owner of the land who had granted him permission to build upon it.
After this, we then popped in to see Paa Joe’s Mother and aunties. They are all over 100 years old. It was so, so great to meet them.
From here, we took a drive to one of the only art galleries in Accra to see some of Paa Joe’s coffins on display.
At the end of a long day we went back to the the beach shack complex I had previously been double booked into and was able to find my own hut. The lights worked only intermittently, having been damaged by sea water, and the pipes in the bathroom were rusty, but, what an amazing view. The restaurant and bar were also just what I wanted.
