What is Canada to you? This is a question that means something different to every Canadian, and is probably harder to answer then you think. Before spring break, my class was visited by an organization known as Heritage Canada, who are running a contest where you can make a video that answers the question “What is Canada to me?” to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday.
Your video can’t be more than 30 seconds long and is supposed to focus on something your really enjoy about Canada such as it’s beautiful nature or equality and diversity. If you live in Canada (even if you don’t have a citizenship) and want to share your love for our country (as well as potentially win an iPad) then click here to learn more!

The Latest Development

About a month ago, my parents had told me to come into the living room because they had a some exciting news for me. Naturally, I expected it to be another wonderful trip to the dentist, but I soon came to realize it was a bit more important than that. They informed me that the Heritage Canada had officially gone through all the preliminary videos, and I had won!!! Me, along with the other early bird video winner, have won a trip to Ottawa, an iPad Air, and a course with the National Film Board of Canada to help me create my own digital story to put in the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa! This is an amazing opportunity for me, and I am extremely excited to visit Ottawa.

Getting Started 

We first heard about the Here’s My Canada contest when people from heritage Canada visited out school to film us in short videos talking about what Canada is to us. This videos, although simple, was actually a major help in my final project for it helped me come up with my topic and shape my script. After this, we were given the opportunity to create more detailed videos that could include anything we felt fit. Here is the first draft of my script:

My Canada 🇨🇦:

What is Canada to me? It’s a place, were you can visit a beautiful city, and a lush forest in the same day. It’s a place, where behind your house there is an open frontier just waiting to be explored. It’s a place where the stars shine bright at night and people come together to watch them. It’s a place, where there is no border between us and nature, that’s my Canada.

Making my Video

Before I started making my video, I first thought about what I wanted to talk about. I decided I wanted to talk about nature because it has always been such an important part of my life. Wether it is taking a hike through the woods, or swimming at Deep Cove, the beautiful, lush world around me has always helped shape my world. The next thing to do was come up with a format for my video. I decided that I would want to go with a documentary intro style because I’ve always loved the way that they are set up along with the audio elements typically included.

Now that I had the format ready to go, it was time to make a shooting plan. This is a crucial step whenever you are making a movie, because it allows you to see what content you need to get before you set out to get it. My plan was to start off with something unmistakably Canadian to set the tone (like a flag). Then I wanted to go into some beautiful pans over landscapes to give the audience a sense of amazement. After that, I wanted some close ups of beautiful detail, and finally a conclusion slide after I had displayed everything I wanted to. Once my plan was in order, I was able to begin shooting.

To get captivating and authentic shots, I decide to film at tourist places, as well as woodland locations that had personal value to me. I took multiple clips from different perspectives so I would have a variety of footage to choose from for the final project. Then, once I had decided which shots I would use, I put them in iMovie to start editing the final draft of my video. I would shorten and speed up some clips to make sure my video had everything I wanted in it, but it didn’t go over 30 seconds. I also used the app Canva to make an exit picture to finish my video in my first two drafts. Then, I recorded myself reading my script as narration and added some quiet royalty-free music to the background to help capture the mood I was trying to convey. Finally, I added the exit bumper required for the contest and I was ready to go.

Here are the drafts my video went through:

Click here to see my final draft

My Digital Story 

As you may recal me saying the the beginning of this post, the Here’s My Canada contest has given me the opportunity to create a digital story to display in the Canadian Museum of History. “Now what is a digital story?”, you may be wondering. Well, it basically a collecting of images, videos, audio, and more, that demonstrates a message you want to get across. For ours, we get to create one that is around 5 minutes in length which goes deeper into the topic of what Canada means to us (specifically a certain aspect within the broader topic of our last video). You can focus on a place, a person, and event, etc. (anything that speaks to you).

I am doing mine on Grouse Mountain. This is because it has always been a place where I could get so close to the wilderness, and feel it’s sheere vastness and beauty. Ever since I was in grade 5, I’ve been going to hiking camps up there every summer, and each time I get to see more and more of the wild side of our amazing country. I’m planning on making my story about it’s history, impact on me, and impact of the surrounding area/people who visit it. I also plan to head up there soon on a sunny day to begin taking pictures and videos so I can start working on putting together my digital story.