The process of creation was wonky for this project. It started out with a grand plan, a group of five consisting of Chris, Tom, Cashel and I creating one video. Then it all fell apart and plans for the project went dormant for weeks until it was overdue. After a kick in the behind from Willemse the group broke up and Chris and I went left to my house and Tom and Cash went right to Cashels house.
The technology we used was simple but good. To record we used my iPhone 6s recording at 4k resolution 30 frames per seconds, along with a rode clip mic courtesy of Willemse. 4k is a pretty amazing video quality to record at and I’m very happy phone has this ability. To edit we used iMovie on my iMac and pulled photos from the past from my moms photo reservoir of over 60,000 photos.
We recorded at the beach down the street from where I live. This beach contains a lot of great sentiment and memories for me that embodies what I see when I think of Canada. The natural beauty and ambience (at least to me) highlights the beauty and quality of nature that we decided to opt out of our movie.
We decided to tell our story by recording our selves reading the same script then working to splice them together and create a flowing a story that incorporated both of Chris and I while being easy to understand. This concept and attempt at telling the same story through flipping frames of Chris, Me, and photos of both of us was intended to be kinda conversational and sound like we were building off of each other.
We chose the story of Canadian Opportunity because we believe that the opportunities that are presented to Canadians are very different and special than most countries. The opportunities of Education and Health care are so amazing its hard to put into words. Chris and I are personally connected to Education and Health so it was easy to talk on and our minds and hearts were only opened more when we reflected on how lucky we really are.
Drafts upon drafts of editing went into this and it really surprised me the kind of flaws its possible to find in a 30 second project. It started with 4 minuted and 30 seconds of footage and after a couple hours we had edited it down to 1 minute and 51 seconds. At this point we saved our first draft and took which you can see here
After this we moved onto slimming it down to 30 seconds. I found this very hard and placing the clips properly took me along time to get it right. Finding the sweet spot between understandability and time length is a fine line that sits within the grey area of my mind. I usually produce long and drawn out movies as I find it hard to discard footage thats good but just isn’t 100% there yet. After many hours of editing and arguing with Chris we came to this conclusion. We then added quality photos and videos overlaying footage where it fit and added to the quality of the final project. The video is being “reviewed” by someone within the ‘My Canada’ organization, thats the reason the video is linked to youtube and not to the Heres My Canada Site
You can watch the Final product (on Youtube) here:
Reflection. I wanted to do this project on the beauty of Canada and how we live in such an amazing place but after thinking and some challenge from Chris I decided that the topic of beauty is too shallow and we should connect on something deeper. The topic of Opportunity has made me think even harder than normal about how privileged I am to live where I live. I enjoyed creating this, but I know I could of done better. mostly with my poor time management and lack of earlier commitment.