You know when you almost walk into somebody and you both try to avoid each other but step the same way and end up hitting each other anyways? Well that’s basically what happened to the Imo and the Mont-Blanc on the morning of December 6th, 1917. These were two ships, both inside the Halifax Harbour, which collided resulting in the largest man made explosion before the nuclear bombs.

For this assignment we had to create a news report on The Halifax Explosion with a group of no more than four. My group was made up of Marley, Maria and Nolan. Our first step was to do research on the event. We used the Canadian Encyclopedia and CBC to do this. Then using our information we wrote a script as if the event had just occurred.

Once we finished our script it was time for filming. We decided to film against a green screen and later edit the video to look like a news room. On our first day of filming we hadn’t fully planned out the format of our video so we didn’t get much done, but we did come up with a pretty good green screen set up.

*insert green screen setup pic*

We put a block under the green screen which we then sat behind to allow us to edit in a news desk later. Our next filming session was after school at Marley’s house, where we got over 30 minutes of Nolan bloopers. While these were funny they weren’t very productive, and it took Marley so long to sift through them to get our actual footage. But at least by the end of our filming session Nolan could say the word subsequent.

During our last filming session we managed to be quite productive. Marley, Maria and I all got all of our clips filmed and ready to go, so then it was time for editing. It is quite hard to collaborate when it comes to editing, so Marley ended up actually putting together the video and making it look good. She used the software final cut to actually create our video. The group helped her out by finding virtual newsrooms that we could use, and finding pictures to go along with the script. After many hours of editing, and a long group house party (which killed my battery life) the News Report was finally finished.

https://youtu.be/x-V4MHEhUOA

The Halifax Explosion devastated the city, and a memorial service is held for it each year on December 6th at 9:00am in Halifax, by the Memorial Bells at Fort Needham to commemorate the casualties of the incident. I urge you to take a minute out of your day this year on December 6th to remember those lost and injured during the tragic incident.