“Action!” I heard that word too many times to count throughout this project. Few minutes of acting and filming turned into hours of editing. “How might I use moving images to tell a story?” That is our driving question that we were trying to answer for Maker. The assignment was for us to make 4 different kinds of videos about the west or in the west. A TikTok, an Interview, a Silent Film, and an at home video. The TikTok and Silent video was more for fun and putting our videography skills in use, the at home video was more putting our video editing skills to use, and the interview video was more related to answering the humanities driving question. 

Silent Video

We filmed our Silent videos in Three Valley Gap (a.k.a Ghost Town) because it had many different buildings that we could go to as well as a village out line to use. Since this was a group project, we made a story spine to help us get a grasp on what we were going to do once we arrive at the ghost town.

I am really proud of this work, and I learned so many new filming and angling skills while creating this video. Something that I would make sure to do next time, would be to make sure that the music that I used for this video is not copyrighted. Because after I published this onto YouTube, I found out that the music was copyrighted, so I had to re-edit and re-upload the whole video.

TikTok Video

The TikTok was filmed in any location we went to that we thought fit our individual TikToks. I really enjoyed making this one the most, since it was a short and sweet story about what my journey in Alberta looked like.

I learned about transition skills, since most of my TikToks included a transition. Something that I think I could do better for next time is the lighting, because in one of my transitions,, you couldn’t even see the faces of anyone on screen. 

Interview Video

The interview videos were filmed wherever we could find someone who was comfortable being interviewed (tourists or staff members), which was very nerve wrecking, because we had to talk to strangers in a different province. I think that this was the hardest video to make, because it took the most preparation, research, and editing.

Something that I would do better next time would be to be more prepared with my questions beforehand, because I interviewed many many people, but I could only use 3 of those interviews because I wasn’t prepared enough, and screwed the rest of the other ones up. 

At Home Video

The at home video was about what inspires me? We had to film a video talking about ourselves and introducing ourselves a little bit to the world. The video was made up of short clips that I filmed in my house and put together with a voice over reading out a script that I wrote. I really enjoyed making this video because this video was solely about me, which meant that I didn’t have to go out and research and gain information, because I had all the info I needed to create this video.

Something that I could have done better, was my attention to detail. I had to start over or re-upload this video many times because of my lack of attention to detail (e.g. music, voice over, video clip, time limit).

Conclusion

I learned many things through out this project, such as learning how to tell fictional, informational, and personal stories through videos, and learning new video filming and editing skills. Thank you for reading this blog post, and make sure to check out my YouTube channel! And if you want to learn more about my trip to Alberta, click here!