In past posts, I have introduced SAISA as “the regional athletic conference that includes many international schools from across the South Asian region.” However, the official definition of SAISA is South Asian Inter-Scholastic Association, and as a result it is a platform for much more than just athletics and sports. It also includes some less competitive events that give international students from across the South Asia a platform to share their skills in the arts as well as in mathematics. Similar to the athletic tournaments, these events are also hosted at one of the SAISA schools and the other participating schools travel to the host school to participate. This academic year, The Overseas School of Colombo was chosen to host the SAISA Visual Arts event at the end of February in 2019.

Ms. Morgan Krajczar, the visual art teacher at OSC, was behind the entire organization of SAISA Art 2019. Because she is a supervisor of GeckoNet, she is familiar with the service we offer to the school community, so she reached out to me seeking my assistance with photography during the event. Personally, I had a packed schedule from late January until early March due to my involvement with the Colombo Model United Nations Conference, SAISA Badminton, as well as GeckoNet. Due to these involvements, and challenging academics, I was reluctant to help out with SAISA Art as well, but as the leader of GeckoNetwork I knew it was our duty to support this event as well. Ms. Morgan was very understanding, and we came to an agreement that I would join the SAISA Art group on their field trip to experience Sri Lankan art on the first day as a photographer, but would only come for a few hours on the subsequent days to get some pictures of the budding artists producing their artworks. As SAISA Art drew closer, I wasn’t too stressed or worried about my involvement with my involvement with SAISA Art because I didn’t really have much to do in preparation for it other than to show up and take some good pictures.

The Website

2 days prior to the event, when I was preparing for the WWW celebration assembly during lunch time, I was called into Mr. Fisher’s office and informed that Ms. Morgan had had to leave for home due to a family emergency. Mr. Fisher, the IT director at school, requested my support to setup a website to share information about the event with the participating schools and also to get more involved with the event by helping out with the livestreams as well as photography and other media/tech support during the event. Despite being busy with academics, and a variety of other involvements, I agreed to do my best and support the school administration in this time of need.

A website was needed primarily because the administration didn’t have any other communication media with the other participating schools. Therefore, the primary purpose of this website was to allow for easy access to the livestreams and the pictures from the event. Understanding this, that night I quickly setup a one-page website at the url http://osc.lk/saisa/art. I also redirected any traffic going to the url http://osc.lk/saisa to this destination. As you can see below, the website was really simple, with just two buttons: one linking to the YouTube livestream and another linking to a Google Drive folder with the photos from the event. Nevertheless, it got the job done and Mr. Fisher and the rest of the administration was satisfied with it.

Photography

On the next day, as agreed earlier, I joined the group on their field trip to various art hotspots in and around Colombo as a photographer. It was a new experience for me because I’ve never really done any photography of working artists. Moreover, we moved through a variety of locations and environments with various lighting conditions that really pushed me. The skills I had gathered during my Week Without Walls experience a couple of weeks prior were very useful when dealing with these challenging conditions. I was simultaneously photographing, editing, watermarking and uploading pictures to the website when we were on the road on that first day. We returned back to the school late in the afternoon and I was really tired by then and not really looking forward to doing the same for two more days. Furthermore, I knew that I couldn’t be at the school for the entirety of the next day because as its Head of Technology I needed to meet the printer of the Colombo Model United Nations Magazine to handover the necessary files and begin printing. Therefore, I reached out to two 7th Grade GeckoNet members who have proven to be committed and talented throughout the year to come to school and help me out: Praneeth and Vinuda. They pulled through, and helped me out with photography over the course of the entire weekend and uploading them to the website. On the last day, we also got a special request from Ms. Morgan to photograph every single artwork at the final exhibition, which I managed to get done in not too much time with the support of Praneeth and Vinuda. All the pictures from the event can be seen here.

We were also called onto do some work with the drone to try and capture a human moonstone of the SAISA Art 2019 participants because the icon of the entire event was the Sri Lankan moonstone. This was quite a challenge because we had to organize access to the drone, and do some challenging maneuvers inside the gym with just a day’s notice. Nevertheless, as you can see below, the picture turned out really well; I was quite satisfied with the end result, and so were the participants of SAISA Art 2019.

Videography

In all big events hosted at The Overseas School of Colombo from SAISA to COMUN, we always make a recap video that highlights some of the key moments from the events. For SAISA Art however, I had decided not to make a video because I was already so busy and barely able to do the photography aspect. However, after Vinuda and Praneeth joined me I just threw the idea of making a video out there to see their response. They loved the idea and told me that they were surprised we weren’t making a video in the first place. Vinuda put his hand up to edit the video, so in addition to taking pictures Praneeth and I also went out to get footage of the working artists using the DJI Ronin stabilizer.

 

Vinuda stayed in the studio and edited non-stop for the next two days until we had a great video in our hands. We shared the video at the closing art exhibition, where many of the visiting artists and teachers commended us on putting together such a great piece of work in such a short period of time. The video was also shared at the next assembly of the OSC secondary school. The final video can be seen below.

All in all, participating in SAISA Art 2019 was an extremely valuable experience despite the timing and how busy I was with other involvements. Taking up this challenge allowed me to develop some of my pre-existing skills like photography, videography, web development and leadership/management.