Archive film

Finally we looked at the archive collection at Brent Museum and Archives and how this can be incorporated into film to help support a story, illustrate a theme or spoken word, or be the starting point for a longer plot. Archive material can really enhance a film work but gaining permission to use the material is very important. This includes checking permissions for music and sound as well as film and photography. The young filmmakers were tasked with producing a short 2-3 minute film using archive material from Brent and using the editing skills they had learnt to select and crop and zoom into existing material.

This was definitely the most testing part on the people powered project due to the fact we had to utilise footage that was not our own, this is not something I have ever done before. I wanted to limit myself to try and bring out some different areas of creativity, so I have only used archival footage rather than anything I have captured myself. Looking through the abundance of footage and decide what parts to use was surprisingly not the difficult part however as I found myself wanting to use more than I actually did. The most difficult part was crafting a narrative, I knew that I wanted to show a contrast in eras and the way I done this was showing Brent in the 50’s then into the 90’s and then to the present day during the Covid times and just how much times have changed.

Yasmin made this film using archive material from Brent Museum and Archives. “Brent stands out from other boroughs because of its diversity. The music, food and corner shops that decorate Brent celebrate and showcase the fusion of cultures there.”

Funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund