I’ve always been captivated by the magic of filmmaking and specifically the creative process of turning the nonexistent into the real.
As a filmmaker who has worked on my own and others documentaries and fiction films, I’ve had an opportunity to experience the creative filmmaking process firsthand. I discovered years ago that this elaborate and complicated process called filmmaking could be communicated as a simple step by step method for not only bringing film ideas to life but also as a method for bringing ideas to life wherever people get together to create something new.
I started working with schools in 1999 and began helping teachers introduce filmmaking into classrooms as a method of both engaging student learning through the act of making films and as an opportunity for students to experience practice with higher order thinking skills such as visualization, planning, problem solving and analysis – all good things to help them outside the filmmaking project, and especially outside of school itself. Students were learning how to work in groups, identify problems by consensus, communicate clearly, argue for their points, respectfully listen to others and ultimately reach agreements and a shared vision for the film that they would all be making together.
I was invited to bring filmmaking from the classroom into the boardroom and began working with businesses to help train their employees to create videos for recruiting, staff training, customer support and marketing. What I discovered was that these very same skills around consensus building needed in order to clarify the vision for the corporate videos, also developed the communication skills and clarified the vision of the organization and it’s team.
My interest with this facilitation process is to take participants out of their normal perspectives of how they see themselves and their work, and to provide a safe and creative environment for imagining the making of a film of the final product or service that they are providing, and through that process of exploration, articulation and analysis, help create a real plan for executing a vision that matters.
Nikos Theodosakis
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Nikos Theodosakis is an advocate for meaningful living.
Founder of the OliveUs Education Society, he is the architect of the InStill Life, Preserving Your Culture and The Director in the Classroom projects . His book “The Director in the Classroom: How Filmmaking Inspires Learning” examines connected learning through digital media production in the classroom and is a resource for teacher training around the world.
His Mattering project invites schools, businesses and organizations to create meaningful projects that grow a vision that matters to it’s employees and to the people they serve.
Nikos was awarded the Financial Post award for best Business and Arts Partnership in Canada, and recently the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for contribution to community and country. He has presented workshops and keynotes in Canada, US and Europe and connects around the world from his home in Naramata, British Columbia.