Think of somewhere that you live near to, or walk by frequently. It could be your favourite mountain to ski on, town to shop in, or restaurant to eat at. Have you ever wondered how they got the name that made them so famous?

This week was #HistoryWeek2017, so of course in my Humanities class we were told to find a place in the lower mainland that had a name that we wanted to research the history of. My partner, Claire and I chose Gastown which is located in Downtown Vancouver. This town sparked our interest because we wanted to find out if there was someone who’s last name was Gas. After researching the history of Gastown, we found many websites that explained that there was a man named John Deighton who was given the nickname “Gassy Jack” because of his chatty personality.

When Claire and I filmed our first draft of our video, we came across a few production issues that we needed to fix for our final draft. For instance, we needed to re-record the audio because we sounded like we were in a bathroom or somewhere else with a lot of echo. We also needed to fix our bibliography because we put in a format that only showed the link, and you couldn’t even press on the links. We also noticed that our visuals needed to go along with the script better.

The first thing that my partner and I did was re-record our audio so that it was clearer. We did this by recording in a quiet space in my house instead of a hallway which had too much of an echo. Next, we changed the bibliography to MLA format in our final draft and moved it so that it is now in the videos description below. That made the final product more professional and organized which is very important for making a video. The last thing that we did was to change the appearance of the video by adding subtitles which added humour to our short video. This made the overal level of entertainment in the video increase, similar to the video that we watched in class.

First Draft:

Final Draft:

After making this final draft, I have a better understanding of one of the many beautiful places within Vancouver. I know so much more about Gastown and it’s history. Thanks to History Week, more people can do small research projects that give them more insight to the places around them! Which is exactly what it did for me!

Bibliography:

“Gastown Steam Clock Returns.” Family Fun Vancouver, 1 Feb. 2015, www.familyfuncanada.com/vancouver/gastown-steam-clock-returns/.

“Gassy Jack’s Statue.” Travel + Leisure, www.travelandleisure.com/travel-guide/vancouver/things-to-do/gassy-jacks-statue.