Centre 4: A Television Drama from Uganda
The paper shares the experience of the process of developing "Centre 4" a 13-part television drama series produced in Uganda by the Delivery of Improved Services for Health (DISH) Project for television viewing and for video shows in rural settings.
The purpose of the series is to entertain while educating and stimulating discussion about priority health issues in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa. According to the presenter story lines and messages are based on the DISH Project’s research and experience working with Ugandan communities over an eight-year period. Between 1994 and 2002, when Centre 4 was produced, the DISH Project executed a series of nine health communication campaigns. Early during the project, health communicators discovered that videos with facilitated discussions were an excellent way of conducting community education. Not only did videos attract large audiences, they also provided consistency in the information provided. Unfortunately, the project could find few videos produced in Uganda or other African countries concerning many priority health issues. So, in 2001, the project decided to produce videos in Uganda concerning priority health issues common to Uganda and other African countries.
To maximise reach, the project decided to produce the videos as a series for television broadcasts. Centre 4 aims to motivate men and women to use public health services, while showing the real problems of service quality. The series has story lines, characters, and message themes that transverse all 13 programmes for television viewers. Yet, each programme also has its unique story line, messages and characters and can be viewed as stand-alone videos. Individually, each 27-minute programme touches on a different health issue: malaria, child birth, AIDS, family
planning, childhood immunisations, nutrition, sanitation, adolescent reproductive health,
and sexually transmitted diseases. As a whole, the series aims to inspire viewers to become
more actively involved in the operation of their local public health facilities.
A secondary purpose of the programme was to build local video production capacity. In order to grow production expertise, the project teamed up with Mediae Trust, a Kenyan development communication organisation, to import external production talent from Europe and elsewhere in Africa who teamed up with Ugandan trainees. Trainees began by shadowing their foreign mentors, then took on greater responsibility for production over time. Through this process, the project trained Ugandan directors, camera persons, sound technicians, an editor, and three script writers.
The design of the storylines and programme was consucted in a participatory manner. The initial design began in May 2001, with a TV Series Design Workshop facilitated by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center for Communication Programs, and attended by representatives of the Uganda Ministry of Health, other health organisations, stage drama script writers, and audience representatives. Working in small groups, participants reviewed audience research on various health topics and the availability of video materials. They identified the key topics for the 13 Centre 4 programmes, including two cross-cutting themes: male involvement in family health, and the competence and good intentions of health workers.
The DISH Project pretested the offline edits of each programme among audience panels and
fed back comments and suggestions to the Directors for incorporation. To ensure that
audience members could understand storylines and messages of individual programmes
taken out of context, the project pretested individual programmes with two types of groups.
Two pretest groups viewed every programme in the series; and two groups viewed only one
or two programmes without the benefit of viewing others in the series.
Comments
Dear Maddy,
Once again we have to write to your organisation and complain about an extremely misleading article written in support of the "Centre 4" Production.
Mediae developed the initial concept for the series, was contracted to produce, direct, film, edit and provide final edit material for broadcast for the 13 part series.
In addition it was Mediae who proposed and then raised the necessary funding from Ford Foundation to support the capacity building of the crew and their further development on completion of the production.
Ford and Mediae were responsible for ensuring the equipment was finally placed with the trainees and not with the completely unassociated NGO pushed for by Johns Hopkins staff in Kampala
In addition Mediae were contracted to write the scripts and we employed and managed a UK based script editor to develop the whole series which was done with Ugandan writers, Mediae and support from the Ministry of Health. Some limited reference was made to the ridiculously detailed and impractical document prepared by Dish and Johns Hopkins
The scripts were written despite the interference of Johns Hopkins, the executive producer and their consultants
The suggestions and criticisms of the series scripts are available to support this.
The director, most of the writers and 90% of the crew and actors will tell you that Centre 4 is a success despite the interference and poor management from the project that part funded it
Finally Mediae continue to produce highly acclaimed TV dramas, documentaries and Radio drama series for development and remain a leading Media for development organisation.
Perhaps you would add our contact address as the Producers of the series - Dish certainly were not, nor Johns Hopkins or any of the other unfamiliar organisations and names now associated with it
Contact David Campbell Producer Mediae@africaonline.co.ke
Yours Sincerely
David Campbell
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