“Starting a blog post is like trying to juggle flaming marshmallows – you’re not sure if it’s a recipe for disaster or the next big hit at the circus.” 

Hey y’all. Glad you’re here. 

A shorter project has wrapped up at room 203 at Seycove Secondary. A project all about Nationalism. If you’re like “what the heck is nationalism” then you’re in luck, because I’m about to tell you. The dictionary definition of Nationalism is “identification with one’s own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations”. Basically, nationalism is when somebody really loves their country. 

At the start of the project, we were to all fill out a form about which countries nationalism we wanted to study. On that Friday, we were told to fill out the form that weekend, so that Harris and Madsen could craft groups for us. I left class thinking ‘Yeah, I’ll just do it this weekend’. I did not do it that weekend. 

I got to school on Monday, and realized my mistake. 

I looked up at the board, and glanced through the country assignments. I happened to be thrown into America. I wasn’t very thrilled at all.

Firstly, I had studied the American revolution in previous project this year, and I wanted to study something different. Also, no disrespect to the American group, but that wasn’t really a group I wanted to study with. Obviously, none of those are big reasons to leave the group, so I put those aside and began to study. 

I was so bored.

Obviously, it was my fault for forgetting to fill out my form, but American nationalism bored me so much. I told that to Mr. Harris, and luckily, he seemed to feel bad for me, and moved me to a group of my choice. 

After extensive research consisting of a single google search, I concluded that the Czech Republic was the group for me. 

Full steam ahead, Czechia! 🇨🇿

So, I joined the fellow Czechia researchers and began, y’know, researching.

I could immediately tell Czechia was a much better country for me to study. I really got into Czech nationalism, and I really enjoyed studying it. 

The final chapter of this project was to create a short, 3-4 minute YouTube documentary about our Nationalism country. As a class, we watched a few professionally made YouTube documentaries, to see what worked in catching our attention, and what didn’t.

I began writing the script for my video, and I actually had a lot of fun writing it. 

As an avid YouTube lover since like 2013, I’ve seen many a-YouTube videos in my time, so I knew, more-or-less, what should be in my video.

I really based my video off of famous YouTuber and fellow Vancouver-ite, JJ McCullough. His videos are excellent at being engaging and entertaining, while also being educational and non-biased. I’ve seen enough of his videos to know what format he follows, and even his small mannerisms that were engaging. I promise I’m not a stalker though. I highly recommend the reader of this post check him out. He’s great. 

After my script was constructed, I began to create the video.

For whatever reason, I decided iMovie was the software for me. I’ve used iMovie in the past and had no problems, but never for anything of this scale. Let’s just say, by the end of this project, I contemplated deleted the app. 

Anyways, creating the video was tedious, but enjoyable. I sat down at my desk, turned on some purple LED lights, turned off the main light in my room, played some country music, and got to cooking.

Although the struggles with iMovie, I really had fun making my video. 

I spent a majority of my SDPLEDLOCM (sit down, purple led, lights off, country music) sessions creating animations. 

A lot of people find animating to be a tedious and boring process, but I really enjoy it. I find it relaxing, and I like working my way to a final product. 

That is, until my hand cramps up.

Apart from the JJ McCullough inspiration, my video was also influenced by the YouTube channel Oversimplified.

Oversimplified’s videos are amazing because they educate you, while you’re hunched on the floor, crying of laughter. The most obvious example of Oversimplified inspiring my video was my music choice. I used the same music he does in his videos. But I also tried to sprinkle some humour into my video, in the hopes of getting my viewers interested. That’s why the first scene in my video in intended to be funny. I want people to click on my video, and stay there. You really gotta grab their attention early, otherwise, they’d already have clicked off the video. 

Another thing I really wanted to do in my video was insert my personality into it as much as I could. I try to do that with every project, but I really wanted to make it clear in my video that it was Nikan’s video. For example, when writing blog posts, including this one, I’m not really thinking about what I’m writing. I kind of imagine I’m giving a speech in my head, and just writing it down. I want it to look like it’s something I would actually say. There’s nothing worse than trying to be someone you’re not. I’m Nikan. I’m not Sepaus. I’m not John, not Steve, not Joe, I’m Nikan, and my work should show that. I want you to be able to click on a blog post, not read the name, but know “yup, that’s Nikan”. So, I made sure my video stayed educational, while also being casual and easy to watch. 

Overall, I was really happy with my video. Sure, it was a few seconds off the minimum, but I like it. I worked hard on it, and I think it shows.

So that’ll wrap up my post for today, love, take care, I’ve been Nikan.