Fight for Peace member Amet recently took part in a free Commercial Production course with the creative agency, Iconic Steps. The 5-day course provided the opportunity for young participants to work with industry professionals introducing them to the elements of filmmaking, from pre-production to shooting and editing.

Amet is a young man of many talents and has just finished his first year of studies in Accounting and Finance with Fintech at the University of East London. He is also a Fight for Peace judoka, a founder of youth leadership group, Youth Power, and a member of the Young Creatives project which supports young people to gain experience in content creation and access to further development opportunities. 

We caught up with Amet to find out about his experience and the impact it’s had on his creative journey since completing the course:

“That course was crazy. It was 5 days from Monday to Friday. I applied thanks to Kayla to the course and provided my details and they sent an email back to come on Monday to start. 

When I started I didn’t know anything about media, I came out and I felt like I had learned so much and was so excited to use my knowledge and share and show my creativity. I believe I am a creative so I just needed that push to learn about editing and camera work and how you set up equipment. They taught us all of this stuff. 

There were a few more young people, about 5 or 6 who were on the course too. Some had experience, and some didn’t and it was nice because we made a bond through the course. We had a group chat too to speak about our own projects. 

Even the teachers – Alex was great and explained everything perfectly and helped us without getting frustrated, so thanks to Alex!

It felt very chilled and you can see everyone in the same boat. It’s not like you are the new one. A lot of people didn’t know a lot either, but they showed us from the foundations, the basics of a video montage to timelapse, how to make it properly and why it is so important to name your files and why organisation is so important. That really made me more relaxed having these people with me on the journey.

Since then, from the moment I learned all of this stuff I wanted to experience it and do projects. I downloaded the Adobe editing suite and just started practising and made something out of what i’d learned. I made a very small introduction for a potential movie with the knowledge and shared it with friends and they were excited about it too.

I also used the skills I learned at Iconic Steps here at Fight for Peace. I moved from my role as an interview host to directing and editing. Directing is something I enjoy as it gives you control over how you want to see things. I did a few directing shots and editing so that helps me keep practising my skills and improving every time. 

Moving forward I just want to become better at editing and directing and understand more about the media industry as I find it very exciting. 

As an accountant, I think my new creative skills will help with that if I want to produce content around accounting. It can actually help me because when I go back to university I will have to do a lot of presentations about accounting. I think my presentation will be better than everyone else’s because of the software I am able to use.

I would tell anybody to JUST DO IT! You will make friends as well.”

Iconic Steps is an impact-driven organisation creating spaces for young people from diverse backgrounds to build creative skills in order to create a more equal creative industry. Big thank you to the Iconic Steps team for providing such brilliant opportunities to young people in our communities.