President Joyce Banda: New Focus on Women’s Health and Empowerment in Malawi

This is a guest post by TechChange alumna Julia Nagel.

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In December 2012, I traveled with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to Zambia and Malawi to shoot videos on women’s health. Armed with three cameras – a Panasonic HMC, a Canon Rebel T3i, and a Canon 5d Mark II – we sought to capture the voices of African women on issues that affect their lives and the lives of countless women in their country: maternal mortality, cervical cancer, and family planning. Why three cameras you might ask? My fellow videographer and I both agreed that while the Panasonic HMC is a highly versatile camera, its look does not compare to that of a nice DSLR.

With the DSLR cameras, colors are more saturated, images are more vivid, and you get a nice crisp focus on your subject (if you’re able to manage how sensitive that camera’s focus ring is) that nicely blurs the background. The DSLR does have two major downfalls though. One, it does not operate well in low light (a major problem during Malawi’s rainy season). Two, there’s no good way to capture audio. Thus, the
Panasonic was used for every shoot alongside the DSLRs.

 

In this video, Joyce Banda – the first female President of Malawi – talks about the importance of women’s health and empowerment, particularly in Africa and in her country. The interview was both inspiring to shoot and to edit. The two cameras we used in this video are the Panasonic HMC for the wide shot, and the Cannon 5d Mark II for the tight shot. The video was edited in Final Cut Pro and the cameras were matched in Final Cut using an incredibly helpful program called Plural Eyes. To read
more about the interview, please visit: www.SmartGlobalHealth.org/JoyceBanda. Also, stay tuned to www.SmartGlobalHealth.org for the additional videos that will be released from our trip, due out in February.