Wowzers! Hello I’m Aedan Loughran as you may or may not know, but that’s IRRELEVANT! I am writing this in the year 2019, Feb 21st. I am currently exploring the deep alley ways of Victoria’s Chinatown. How did I get here? What am I doing here?!?l? Find out by watching the legendary video below!! Just do it ~ Nike.

Sorry about that crazy intro. It’s actually been a couple weeks since we got back from our trip to Victoria and since then we’ve been working hard on completing these videos. The big idea, or the driving question was, how might we help visitors to Victoria connect with BC’s history? First let’s get this out of the way…

(Went for an old film style in that photo so I hope it looks ok 👌)

What we did

Obviously this post is supposed to be more about what I learnt than what I actually did so I’m going to keep this short. We got tasked with creating a video during our three day study in Victoria. Before heading there we watched a bunch of styles of film including Rick Steves, and Micheal Palin. We then got assigned a place on the trip to research. I got assigned Fort Rodd Hill and got to work on research and a script right away. When there all we were doing was shoot, shoot, shoot. We didn’t end up going to Fort Rodd Hill in the end because of the weather, but I think it was a great learning experience and made me have to think on my toes and brainstorm quick ways to improvise. In the end I took footage ipduring the whole trip and I made my video based on Chinatown and Ross Bay Cemetery. After shooting everything came the edit. If I were to redo this I’d make my intro a little shorter and have more talking scenes during our stay in Victoria. P.S Victoria was great I’m just not going to bore you by talking all about it. So after all this we had an amazing video. Obviously there were many drafts and this is where most of the learning came in about video editing and shooting. So without further to do here are my drafts.

Draft 1

For draft one I had my whole video done other than the voiceovers. I got a little bit of peer feedback here, but for the most part it was just to finish the voiceovers and polish it up, so that’s what I did. Above is my first draft without voiceovers.

Draft 2

So during the shooting itself I learnt a lot about making sure to get way more shots than you think you need. I used lots of the things I have been learning in PLP regarding videos including camera angles and lighting, well also bringing in what I’ve learnt from YouTube including lots of transitions and little edits. If I were to go back to Victoria and reshoot I would get more shots of myself walking and talking about where we are. Anyways for the first draft I made it the best I could, but after some feedback from Mrs Maxwell and peers I knew I had a few things to change. We actually watched my first draft in class so that was a bit embarrassing, but back to what I was saying. The biggest thing I had to change was the intro bit after the edit at the beginning. I spent too long explaining why my video got screwed up because of not going to Fort Rodd Hill. I scraped that and added in a more cinematic walking and talking scene of me in my backyard with some transitions. I found this as one of the hardest parts too film because I had to get my brother to film the whole thing and he’s not the best at it. It did teach me leadership though and definitely patience. After adding that I was ready for some more feedback and critique. Time for draft three.

Draft 3

Now that I had a way better intro and solid voiceovers I was nearly done. I just had to create a better ending for draft four and rather than have a ‘thanks for watching’ create more of a credits. I edited a little credits ending to the beat to the music and then I had draft four, which I thought would be my final draft, but we missed something crazy. I also tried fixing the audio to make it all match.

Draft 4

The first prime minister of Canada is NOT buried at Ross Bay. I accidentally said John A Macdonald was when I actually meant James Douglas. John, James… Donald, Douglas. I was tired ok! This and a couple of audio fixes was all I needed for my beautiful final draft. Watch this beauty below if you haven’t already.

Final draft

Here it was. The thing I’d been working on for over a month now. I finally finished it. I thought this project was a great one because I got to show some of the skills I’ve learnt in video making and learn some new ones like the rule of thirds and not being in a dark museum. I thought that this was a great learning experience and I loved that we got to explore Victoria as well. I also learnt lots about the history of BC and the gold rushes. I felt that this project was jam packed, but it was an exciting one and I’m now ready for spring break. See y’all in a couple of weeks.

Until next time… Aedan Loughran