Documenting the efforts and progress of the DA – Philippine Rural Development Project through photos and videos has been proven to be an effective medium in disseminating, promoting, and delivering the Project’s key objectives to the general public on any social media platforms.

Producing relevant photos and informative video presentations enables the target audience and general public to easily understand how the Project works while showcasing the emerging benefits that PRDP continues to bring.

Hence, to continue this practice and be able to keep up with the trend and better ways of creating such outputs, the DA-PRDP North Luzon Cluster staff underwent training and workshop on Photo and Video Production from January 31 – February 3, 2023 in Baguio City.

Spearheaded by the InfoACE Unit, the training aims to capacitate and enhance the existing knowledge and skills of the participants in the fields of photography and videography to come up with outputs that would clearly and effectively convey the information on the PRDP ways.

In addition, the activity also seeks to strengthen the collaboration among the participating unit staff from the Project Support Office (PSO) and the Regional Project Coordination Offices in the cluster.

On the first day, the invited resource speakers presented the basic concepts of mobile photography and the fundamentals of videography. They shared tips and techniques in shooting and composition using a mobile camera, editing and post-processing photos on a mobile device and available software, and ways to maximize the social media engagements of photographs. Meanwhile, for videography, important camera settings, style, post-processing, and motion graphics for video presentations were tackled.

The activity also featured a comprehensive workshop the following day, wherein participants were grouped and tasked to capture portraits of their partner, photos showing tourism, and a short video demonstrating the discussed techniques and styles.

In her message, PSO Deputy Project Director Elma S. Mananes expressed her appreciation for the workshop outputs and urged everyone to take an active part in documenting what the PRDP is doing to contribute to the development of the agriculture sector.

“This activity is very helpful for us to be able to capture everything important and build the image of what PRDP is for through documentation. So that during the mission, we will be able to show the World Bank the accomplishments in project implementation that we have done for the past six months,” Mananes said.

She noted that for every implementation support mission, the cluster regularly produces audio-visual presentations that feature not only the efforts of the staff but also the benefits that emerge from various implemented PRDP projects across the four regions.

The speakers critiqued and graded the photo and video outputs of the participants and gave comments for further improvements. (Ericson M. Guiao, PSO North Luzon InfoACE)