Training Guides

Safely and Securely Producing Media

ENGLISH (9MB)                                               (9MB)  العربية 
This guide is a collection of our best practices and suggestions we’ve made to our colleagues over the last five years. It is intended for people who may have tried to shoot one or two videos, but find themselves at a loss on how to improve their work.

We split up the process of shooting high quality video into three sections, Plan your Story, Record Your Story, and Share Your Story. This is to allow people to focus on different parts of the process if they wish, but also will take someone through the process from beginning to end. Each section is designed so that you can skip ahead if you already understand it, or focus on that specific part.

I’d like to thank Jesse Hambley and Ashley Low for their involvement as graphic designers on this project. They wanted to be involved for the entire process and that made a difference you’ll see immediately when you open this guide. Every page will focus the reader on exactly what they need to know, and that would not have happened without them.

We’ve had some great feedback from partners, colleagues and collaborators around the world already. But we’re always interested in hearing more. This guide is only a start from us, we’d like to continue to improve it and see it grow into something more. We’re also interested in seeing it translated into as many languages as possible. We’re working with some people to get it translated into Dari and Pashto, but if you’d like to work to see it translated into something else we’d love to talk to you. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, or you can use our Contact page.

We’re going to reevaluate the guide in the coming months as we continue to hear about feedback and responses from it being used in the field.

Update: If you’re based in the United States, we advise you to be aware of the Surveillance Self-Defense site put together by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The site aims to educate the American public about the law and technology of government surveillance in the United States, providing the information and tools necessary to evaluate the threat of surveillance and take appropriate steps to defend against it.

Safely using SatPhones

ENGLISH (1MB)                                                 (1MB)  العربية 
This guide will explain generally how satphones work, specific risks and precautions, and provide specific menu settings to use an iSatphonePro more safely. This edition of the guide has been prepared with a specific slant toward phone use by activists and citizen journalists inside Syria. Later versions will address additional use-cases, and potentially other locations.

Satellite communications bring a specific series of risks, depending on your use-case. Although the methods for transmitting satellite communications have not change greatly in recent years, their increasing accessibility necessitates greater understanding of how these communications work.

License

These Guides are published under Creative Commons License
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)