CAPTURED ON CAMERA! ‘BUK Live in Cameroon’

The international 2021 BUK ‘Summer’ Camp that was held in July, provided a wonderful opportunity for the young people of Brunstad Christian Church (BCC) fellowships in Cameroon to produce their own short film – ‘BUK Live in Cameroon’. BUK stands for Brunstad Youth Clubs and the film features BCC youth clubs in Cameroon and other African countries taking part in the BUK ‘Summer’ Camp. ‘BUK Live in Cameroon’ as well as similar productions from some of the other countries around the world participating in the camp, such as Australia, the United States of America and Norway, were screened on BrunstadTV during the camp, giving a worldwide glimpse of some of the BCC youth clubs and their activities during the camp.

Due to coronavirus restrictions as well as other constraints, a limited number of young people could attend the BUK Summer Camp held in Norway. However, live transmissions on BrunstadTV made the spiritual edification and some of the camp activities and events accessible to BUK worldwide. Local activities were also organised for the young people in each participating country.

The enthusiasm with which the young people in Cameroon undertook the production of the film, as well as the sheer excitement and joy of the younger ones as they took part in all the camp activities, is plain to see in the film.

The training and guidance received from the media team from South Africa, enabled a significant advancement in the transfer of skills to the young people of BCC fellowships in Cameroon.

Evodie Fidjo (Yaoundé, Cameroon), talks about the experience she gained while working on the production:

“This kind of project was new to us in Cameroon, but working with the South African team was such a huge help! We learned how important the planning phase is, how much time is involved and that good communication helps people to understand what needs to be done and enables them to do things better. We had many and regular planning meetings to achieve this and had a great team working on the technical planning.“

“We had to prepare the young people for the day of the filming and they were 100% committed to all areas of the project – décor, rigging, singing, filming, dancing etc. Through trial and error we also learned about script writing. We used the BUK Central Template for the program and this made things easier for us.“

Alain Brice (Yaoundé, Cameroon) shares his involvement in the project and what he learned from it:

“It was amazing to see how everything was prepared for the production and it made a big difference to see what is needed on the technical side; this way of working was new to me. Organising the workspace for the editing phase so that those on the same project could work together, was a big improvement and helped to make editing go much faster. We also saw how much effort it takes to get things to work and to finish all the corrections.“

“Personally I learned a lot concerning vocal recording and mastering a song with Logic Pro X. Thanks to the South African team for all their help for the final video to be successful.”

Hervé Kalachi (Yaoundé, Cameroon) explains what he learned from the filming project and how it will help in the future:

“Through this project we learned exactly what the role of the producer is in the making of a film. The film editing phase was a good opportunity to get started with using Davinci software which will now be used in all BCC fellowships in Africa. We learned how to organise a shared project on Davinci in order to enable several people to work simultaneously on the same project.”

Annie Goxo (Vanderbijlpark, South Africa) relates her experiences with the young people in Cameroon:

“It was really good to see and experience how well the young people get along with each other in Cameroon and the positive attitude everyone had. There were times where we had to repeat a scene quite often or had to sing the same song over and over again, but they stayed positive and did everything with so much enthusiasm.”

In celebration of BUK Africa, a song was written especially for the 2021 BUK ‘Summer’ Camp called ‘Simunye’, which means ‘We are One!’ This vibrant song was performed and filmed by members of BUK in various locations in Africa – Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa. Despite the distance that separates the young people of BCC fellowships in Africa, this song is a testimony to the spiritual unity they share!