AHello fellow learners,
I recently got back from a school trip to Victoria with the PLP class. During this trip, we had the task of making a video. For this blog post, I’ll be summarizing our unit on British Columbia’s rich history and also sharing some video-making skills I learned along the way. Lesss go.
Our unit was a two parter. In one part of the class, we learned all about BC’s history and we also learned some skills for videomaking. All of our learning in class led up to the Victoria trip.
We started out by doing this super interactive website about the B.C. gold rush. Luciano and I were able to navigate the confusing website to find all the answers to the questions. I found out later all of this information would come in handy.
After this, we did some research on the House of Parliament in Victoria. We learned about how a bill is passed and other things. It turns out that there are 6 steps to pass a bill, which include First reading, Second reading, Committee of the whole house, Third reading, Royal Assent and Proclamation.
After these two brief lessons, I think we all had an idea of how BC’s government works and also a short history of Victoria.
Then, the project got fully explained to us. What we had to do was pick a location in Victoria of a list. Then, when we went to that place in our trip, we had to film a travel video. The driving question was: How can we help connect visitors to Victoria with BC’s history.
I quickly scanned the list and decided to base my video around the B.C gold rush. Luckily enough, I already knew tons about the gold rush from our past unit when I researched Billy Barker and also the research that we had just done in class a couple days ago. So it was set that I would do my video on the BC gold rush in the Royal BC Museum.
After this, our unit was just planning, planning and planning for our video. Lots of the locations we were going to, there wasn’t a lot of time to film videos. We had to make sure to maximize our film time by being as on top of it as possible. This meant being ready to film at any moment. For us, it seemed like a daunting task. Then, we were issued a film partner. Your film partner had to be ready to film at any moment and had to give you constructive feedback on your videos and the shots that they were filming. My film partner was Jason.
The first thing I did to plan out my video was get research. I scoured the internet for random facts, dates, numbers and any tidbits I could find about the gold rushes of the late 1850’s and early 1860’s. Here’s what I found.
Although it wasn’t a lot, it was definitely enough research for me to have enough to say for 3-4 minutes, which was the required time in our video.
During this time, we were also getting inspiration from travel videos. We watched people like Rick Steves, Michael Palin and others travel the world educating us while doing so. It was intriguing to watch the different styles of talking, voiceovers, travel montages etc.. Here’s one of my personal favourites.
Then, we had to take our video planning to the next step by actually writing out our videos step by step. This was useful to have, but there were lots of complications and so I didn’t get to film every single shot like I planned it. I was thinking ahead when I wrote that my film plan would probably change while I was there. Here’s my original shot list
After I did the shot list, it wasn’t long before our class departed to Victoria. We had to be at the school at 5 am which was, well, less than ideal. Our trip had an awesome itinerary and if I were to go over anything, it would take about another 1500 words so I’ll just hit my personal highlights.
The parliament buildings. We actually got to sit in on a discussion between the MLA’s of the NDP party and the MLA’s of the Liberal party. Our representative from our riding, Jane Thornthwaite, actually gave us a shoutout in front of everyone at the very start of the session. Talk about representing! I really liked this stop because a heated debate actually broke out. I was expecting a calm discussion, but to our surprise lots of shouting and finger pointing was happening. Life of a politician, I guess
Another awesome stop was the China Town tour. It was interesting to learn the history of Victoria and the Chinese population in Victoria.
On the second day, we went to my filming location, the Royal BC museum. Luckily for me, our class got to spend a couple hours at the museum. This meant I had an ideal amount of time to film my video. I really lucked out on my location because other people didn’t have lots of time to film and some people’s locations got cancelled, so they had a rough time making a video.
The museum had a big exhibit on BC’s history and a sub-exhibit on the gold rush. That’s where I filmed pretty much all of my video, apart from a travel montage. In the exhibit, there was an opportunity to gold pan and even large chunks of real gold. It was pretty ideal.
However, museum lighting is notoriously terrible. Even though my script was very factual and (in my opinion) interesting, the bad lighting made my video less quality. Since we had a lot of time, I was able to take multiple attempts at my voiceovers and clips which was handy. Take a look at my first draft.
I thought my first draft was pretty good compared to some people. After coming home though, my buddy Jason and I learned a very valuable lesson in filmaking: the rule of thirds.
After watching my first draft, Ms. Maxwell found out that I, along with my classmates, had forgotten to use the rule of thirds in our videos. The rule of third is a rule of sorts where, to create an ideal photo or video, you position the subject on the one of the two lines if you were to split your screen in three parts. Another rule to the rule of thirds is that the subjects’s eyes should be on the the line as well. We learned this concept by doing when we got back. Here’s an example
Unfortunately, I couldn’t retake any of my clips because we weren’t in Victoria anymore. I guess you can say it was a learning experience.
My following few drafts were small fixes, mainly in audio consistently and also b-roll. Take a look at my final video down below!
I learned a lot of things in the process of this unit.
For one, the rule of thirds. I’ll probably never forget this one. I was so happy with my video and then blam, it’s terrible because of that particular rule.
Another thing I learned is that you have to be very cautious about the location of your video. You have to realize if the lighting is bad and film in a more desirable location. Lighting is key to a good video. If all goes wrong, blame everything on your film partner.
MLA citations. I’m almost positive this will come in handy somewhere in life along the road. I learned how to properly give sources. Check them out in the description of my YouTube video!
Pretty much everything about the Fraser River Gold rush. Seriously, try me. I got it down.
Lots of interesting information about the history of Victoria. In the end, this was a very education trip compared to our Oregon and Alberta field studies. However, I was able to learn lots about Victoria and its deep history, which I’m pretty sure was the point of the trip.
I had fun making and editing my video in this unit and also going to Victoria with my peers was pretty great. In all, a very informative unit on history and filmaking.
Until next time,
Nik
