In grade 9 you get to learn about all sorts of fun things, like revolutions and First Nations, but by far one of the coolest things I got to learn about was making videos. Sadly not all grade 9’s get to do this though, it’s more of a PLP privilege. Our entire first unit we were constantly learning how to create, direct, and edit videos. This was so fun to me because I’ve always made videos for fun. When I was younger I even made my own little band just to make music videos. As well as making multiple iMovie trailers including a stop motion film I made with my Papa based off a Bernstein bear book.

I also then went through phases of making all sorts of different kinds of videos for instagram. What I’m trying to say is that the concept of making videos certainly wasn’t new to me. However in school the videos get marked so I had to think to myself, what makes a video awesome? Well technically there is no perfect answer as there are so many different ways to make videos. So using all the knowledge you have about the video you’re creating you must pick what is most important. For lots of videos that includes music, text, speech, visuals, and a clear story. However those things don’t make sense in some. I’d say the most important thing about a video is making sure it’s understandable. The video you make should be a success and should achieve what you desired.

The first video we made this year was way back to around the second day of school. We were introduced to an app called Clips and we were told to make a quick video using the different tools in the app talking about our passions. After we looked at all of the videos Ms Willemse introduced us to the idea of different angles or shots. If a video is all from one angle it will be boring and people won’t want to watch. So we all came back for a second time with our new and improved videos. Here is mine, please don’t judge 🙂

The next video we made was more serious. We had around 3 days to make a video telling a story. This could be any story, something you are up, something that happened to you, whatever you could think of. I decided to make my video about going to baseball nationals. The summer just before this I played on the BC girls 14U team and won nationals so it was still super exciting for me. In this video I didn’t want to do a voiceover so  decided I’d tell the story through text and I’d give the text fun transitions because I was experimenting with new tools. During this video I learned about making transitions with text, videos, and photos instead of just having them dissolve into each other. Now that I look back at this video I can tell that I moved images and text way too fast and the transitions didn’t make sense. This taught me that you have to make sure everything can be seen easily and it’s not hard to watch.

The next video we made may not sound difficult but it was actually one of the hardest things we made. We were tasked with recreating short horror film. This was super fun however making things exactly right’s so hard. We had to count out the lengths of the angles, count the numbers of steps, match the audio, get a similar setting, and so much more. I was given the job of editing this video as I only acted in it a tiny bit. To edit it I began by changing the colouring to a more red setting to make it seem more like fall. I then took the original video and put it on a translucent layer above what I was editing. That way I could see exactly when it changed and how it changed. This turned out to work super well as the timing in this video meant everything. Here is our version of the video, I would’ve liked to show youth original however it’s their video and I can’t steal their video.

The next HUGE chunk of videos we made was in Alberta. We were tasked with making four different videos, two of which were in groups. To learn about how we made them and to watch all those videos check out my Alberta blog post where I explain that. Anyways in Alberta I learned lot. I learned how to find the best lighting, how to edit videos so that they go to music well, how to alter my voice in Garage Band, how to add sound effects, and one of my favourite things was learning how to tell a story without words. All of these skills are so important in video making but also some are true for other things, like being able to tell a story without words basically describes the project we’re working on right now in school.

Another big video we’ve made was our live event video. The goal of this project was to learn how to get enough footage during an event that when you were editing you would be all set to go. There was no way to film again later since it only happens while it’s live. To learn about what I did for my video read this blog post. For this video I specifically thought about angles and editing because the style I chose involved a lot of quick cuts and back and fourth between different shots. I also had to work on improvising things to say which I found very difficult. This video also made us include a time-lapse, a slow motion, a change of speed, a freeze frame, and a ken burns image. This way we got to experience filming and editing with all different types of media.

This video is one of my personal favourites. In November I got to go into work with my dad who works at Amazon and I got to see what his day was like. I also created a video interviewing different employees about amazon and just getting to understand more about the people behind amazon. To learn more about that read this blog post. I wanted to make this video seem quite professional so when I used all the different interview clips I made it so that people answers would happen right after the other.

Lastly the video that took so much time and effort, while being done in one week was my Chem Stories animation. I will be writing a post about this whole project however a brief overview is that we’ve been learning all about chemical bonding with different elements. So we were tasked to create a story where elements are characterized and they have to bond. We were only given week to make this video and it was one of the most different ones because we were animating. During all of our early science classes we used Keynote’s magic move to animate however I thought the seemed overly complicated for a simple action. So using an app called Cute Cut and Amelia’s beautiful drawings I spent an entire night animation backgrounds and the main character. Here is the video.

I really enjoy making videos and hope we continue to do this. I also hope you can see how much I’ve grown and learned. I think the transformation from my earliest video to my most recent video is astonishing and I’m very proud of myself.