That’s a lie by the way, I did not write this post in sixty seconds, although I did make a video about the Stanley Cup in sixty seconds. Once again I didn’t make the video in sixty seconds, but my group and I made the video, which was the length of sixty seconds. Ok now I’m just confused.

Above was the end product of my favourite project this year in Humanities. The heritage minute project. Our main idea was how the stories of our past shape our identities today. This whole project was set in the time period of the 1800’s up until World War One. The reason I enjoyed this project so much was because even though this was a long project I felt engaged in it and excited to get working on it right throughout until the end. I came into this project when the whole introduction had just been done. I got back from Japan on the second week back from spring break and from then until now I have been working with my group on this video. Everything leading up to it from the initial ideas to the storyboard were important. I got put into honestly one of the best groups consisting of Fraser, Anika, Izzy, and of course myself. We were in charge of the broad category of arts and culture, so we decided to do our video on the subject of the Stanley Cup and Lord Stanley himself.

For this post I am going to try my best to keep it short because typically I catch myself jumbling along about every single piece of the project. What I’m going to do to ensure this doesn’t happen again is choose my favourite three parts of the project. Hopefully this makes the post easier for you to read and I will also have some habits of mind, and curricular competencies that I have gotten better at.

The Screenplay

The screenplay was the first part of the project where I actually started seeing the film come together in a perfect way. I really enjoyed making the screenplay because it was very professional and easy to follow along with. It was awesome because Spencer (a former PLP student) who goes to Capilano University for film got to come in and teach us what we had to know. We showed him our first draft of the screenplay and he told us how to revise. A habit of mind that I really improved during making the screenplay with the group was striving for accuracy. We had a couple drafts of the screenplay and kept making it better every time. This made it better for when filming. The screenplay made it really easy when shooting to see the script and the shots in your mind.

The Filming

When it came to the actual filming it was super fun and the whole film started to come together. We already had done a storyboard and a screenplay with a script so we were confident. I did most of the filming with Izzy taking over when I was on camera. It was awesome using all the skills we have learnt this year so far, especially angles! The footage turned out very smooth and the audio in the end turned out good, but it did take a while to fix that. Anyways, a ISTE standard that I much improved during filming was creative communicator. I had to communicate with my group about where to stand for shots and what angles we were using. I was also creatively communicating the story of the Stanley Cup through the firm of a short video. Shooting was very fun and one of the days I even brought out my new mic and did some voiceovers with it which turned out great with no wind noice.

The drafts

Now a huge part of this video were the drafts we went from this:

to this:

There were many drafts in between, I believe that we had four in total. We improved immensely from the video in the beginning to the video in the end. We did this by taking everyone’s feedback and revising. Some things we changed were the crazy wind noice in most of the shots, which wasn’t as easy as you think it was. We also added music by the final draft which I think gives it more life. I slightly colour graded the video and added black bars to make it more cinematic. Brought the date and text down lower. Changed lighting and used some different shots. Fade in from black. And we added in the outro which Izzy was kind enough to make for the class and it had the same design as Historical just replaced with PLP style, which was done by Jason Guan.

Finally we sent our videos off to Ryan Bamett and Jeanne Archibald who is the coordinate director of Heritage Minutes. They got back with feedback and it was really cool! Here’s ours!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed hearing me jumble on a little less, I tried to make this one shorter and more to the point. We obviously did some more things in this project like short story Tuesday where we’d read a short story and answer questions and stuff. Also the storyboard, and the edit. Now finally, what have I really taken away from this project? Not only have I taken away a better knowledge of how to construct a film, but I have also taken away a new understanding of the importance of stories from our past. Stories from our past have a major effect on our world view, for example the Stanley Cup and Lord Stanley have impacted the sport world and have brought communities together through the battle to win the Stanley Cup. This project has taught me so much about how each little story in our past has effected who we are as Canadians and what our worldview is. Anyways hope you are having a good day!

Until next time… Aedan Loughran