Why we made Editsense

Editsense is based on years of experience of film-making projects in formal and informal education. I've found that however many times you explain the importance of changing shot size and camera position, and dividing a film up into shots, the theory tends to go out of the window as soon as young film-makers get hold of the cameras. Because a lot of our film projects are very short and intensive, we needed a quicker way of getting the participants up to speed.

I decided to try starting with the editing. I began with a short sequence of 11 shots showing a girl approaching the Wales Millennium Centre. We immediately found that doing the editing exercise made a big difference to the quality of the work when the young people got on to making their own films. The original sequence was a bit rough and ready so we decided to create some new films with alternative camera angles, camera positions, focal length and framing. S4C also allowed us to use a real stunt from their popular youth TV drama Rownd a Rownd.

I've used all these films extensively with a wide age range, from Year 6 to adult (I even used the Crash footage with a very enthusiastic Year 3 group). I've also used them on teacher training events such as the Apple Teacher Institute and Film Education's CP3 conference to teach software including iMovie, Final Cut Express and Garageband.