Hello yet again. I haven’t made a post in quite a while. But I’m back and we just finished our latest project which included a field study to Victoria BC, our province’s capital. Field studies are fun because you’re not in a class you’re walking around while learning and not really realizing that. Our other major field studies have been to Alberta and Oregon. The reason we went to Victoria was to learn more about the history of our province. Our driving question for this unit was “How might we help visitors to Victoria connect to BC’s history?”. Everybody got assigned different places or subjects. I got Royal BC museum (biggest museum in BC and highly recommended by me), and BC’s industries. We had to make a video 3-4 minutes long about our place or subject.
Below is my last draft of my video.
https://youtu.be/76NwVq9gSG4
Script:
Our focus for this post was more about what we learned so this is what I learned throughout the unit.
Since I got BC’s industries, I had to research some of the most important industries in BC currently or historically. The two that I most researched were logging, and salmon canning. Salmon canning was a big industry in BC until about 30 years ago. At its peak, there were over 200 salmon canneries along BC’s coast. Logging on the other hand is still going strong but it’s been a big industry since settlers got to BC.
I had a small script and the shot list I should’ve put more effort and time into it. I learned that the script and shot list were way more important than I thought. It makes filming on the spot so much easier. So for next video, I’m going to make sure I have a better script and shot list.
Filming:
This was a challenge for everybody since at every stop we made, we had to film pretty quickly (that’s why having a specific script helps). I got pretty lucky and I had two full hours to film my video since the Royal BC Museum was our longest stop however it wasn’t easy. The other problem is that museums like being dark and so that makes it hard to film without making the person look like they’re part of the wall. My film partner, Izzy, (huge shoutout for some great filming and help), kind of overcame this problem by taking our iPads and phones flashlights and shining them towards me while filming.
Throughout the unit we learned about the rule of thirds. What I took away from it, is that it helps you show the scene better. It also establishes what you’re doing more clearly. So we made a small activity about it, by taking a few pictures using the rule of thirds and then making a very short video.
Editing:
This has probably been the easiest part except the most time consuming. As always we have to make many drafts of our video to make it as good as possible.
Draft 1:
My first draft, had no voiceovers, and the music was choppy. I couldn’t get that much feedback but I knew what I needed to work on. Also it was a bit over the time limit.
https://youtu.be/N7q2akmG2jQ
Draft 2:
My second draft still had kind of the same problems with the music and my audio had been switched around but I had my voiceovers in.
https://youtu.be/CEIu0TGFXLE
Draft 3:
I had a problem with all my clips that they were turning to black for about five seconds which was whatever I had cut from the videos. This made the video way longer than the limit and I had to cut out several parts of the video. I also tried to clean up the audio a bit.
https://youtu.be/oZOsFH8m2MI
Draft 4:
This is the video at the very start of the post. In the end I was pretty proud of it. As mentioned before, all I kept fixing was audio, organizing it and making the volume more consistent.
Conclusion:
Well I took a few lessons out of this project, mostly about filming or things relating to filming like the importance of my script. I also learned that Victoria’s population boomed because of a gold rush in the 1850’s and its population went from 300 to 30,000 in one summer. I heard this about 60 times in the 3 days we went to Victoria so that will remain in my head for quite a while. I guess this is it and I hope you can plan a trip to Victoria and check out its cool history.
Congratulations, you have reached the end of post #35.
See you soon.