Good evening folks. It’s me, Randy, back at you with another awesome blog and project to share. As I mentioned in my last blog post, this project is based on hope. Specifically, stories of hope. We are asked to create an engaging and informative video to answer our driving question while supporting our thesis with evidence.
Here is the driving question:
“What lessons and inspirations can we draw from the stories of individuals and communities that have faced tragedy and overcome adversity.”
Answer to the DQ:
Not all stories of hope have to involve life and death, but they do inspire people to take action and make changes. The most common lesson and inspiration we draw from stories of hope is “if they can do it, then we can do it too.”, applying others’ legacies to ourselves.
Take Martin Luther King Jr. for example. A prominent leader in the civil rights moment. The event itself might’ve taken place long ago, but MLK’s legacy continues to live on to this day. His legacy of challenging racial inequalities is inspiring not only African Americans but other ethnicities and communities as well. His rule of thumb, “non-violent resistance,” plays a critical role in protests in modern-day society.
BLM, Stop Asian Hate, and Feminist Rights are all examples of influence from MLK’s legacy. King showed us that if we keep fighting for our dreams, our voices will be heard, and our future will change for the better. Of course, MLK did not challenge racism by himself; he had tens of thousands of African Americans supporting him. Without them, nothing would’ve changed. As individuals, we might be weak and powerless, but as a society, we can achieve greatness that is beyond our own abilities.
This brings me to my next example, Covid-19. Through this global adversity, we learned how to love, care, and accept. Not all of us survived, but the ones who did are showing immense resiliency and hope for our future. We have worked together as a society to defeat this virus and formed a stronger community bond after this adversity.
Production:
When it comes to videoing, planning is key to success. A well-developed script and storyboard will help you to film more efficiently and direct the crew better on how they should present it. I choose three main topics for my video, MLK, Modern protests, and Covid-19. I brainstormed several video styles and ideas of how to present them.
Here is the document of my video plans. (Click to see)
Screenplay/ story boaed (Click to see)
After settling on the topics I want to include in the video, it’s time to plan how I want to show them. To answer the driving question, it is not necessary to present it as a video. However, the advantage of using a video rather than a podcast is that we get visuals. Visual impact is very powerful in the form of media because it tells you a message without actually saying it and enhances the message you are spreading. Many people are visual learners, and having videos and pictures simply makes it easier to get your point across. I believe this is the reason why teachers show us documentaries instead of reading from the textbook nowadays.
The plan is simple boys, there will be two parts to this video. The first part will be a short biography on MLK, specifically focusing on his legacy, setting a context for the whole video. After the biography ends, it will cut to me introducing the second part. Now, here is where it gets interesting. The second part is a recreation of the “I Have a Dream” speech, except it’s in the form of an interview-style video. I have recruited some of the few minorities (people of colour) within my school to represent their ethnicity/culture and use their voices to tell how “their” community is fighting against adversities. From an outsider’s view, this will be a very inspirational and motivational video of how people are fighting for their dreams, but just like how it works in the real world, they are just paid actors saying what they are paid to say.
Randy’s thoughts (may contain some bias):
Do you ever find it strange how those motivational/emotional videos have perfect interview footage to edit together? The responses from the interviewees are just so concise and clean, almost like there’s a script to what they should say. Whenever I interview with someone, they always go off-topic or give me really vague or long answers. The responses to my questions aren’t necessarily bad, but they are just not engaging enough for me to use. To be honest, when I’m asking my interviewee questions, I most likely already know the answer I’m going to get, simply based on the research I’ve done beforehand. For instance, my Phil Nuytten interview last year was a great example of a bad interview. I learned some new information from my interviewee, but if I were to edit it into a motivational video, it would turn out awful.
For motivational/emotional interviews, it requires you to film them in person because only close-up shots can make them seem personal and meaningful. Similar to how you don’t care when you read about a murder case in a newspaper. Instead, if you were to listen to the victim telling their story face to face, you would feel much more empathetic and emotional. Humans are weird creatures; we don’t think things are real unless we see them with our own eyes.
Final product:
After a month of grinding and begging my crew to film with me, it is finally done. I present you with my story of hope:
The final product honestly turned out great, it was much more complete than I anticipated. This is my first video where I feel it’s actually edited, instead of raw footage being put together.
In comparison, check out this grade 9 video when we worked together as a group:
Reflection:
After I watched the campaign video myself, I felt somewhat inspired. I played a character where I had a great dream of people living in a world without racism, inequalities, and segregation. A part of me actually wish I had such a great goal to work towards. Sometimes, people ask me, “Randy, what is your dream?” my answer to that question is always, “IDK.” I feel like schools and society is training me to become an office worker, where I would work until I retire and have no accomplishments in life, and I’m just kinda going with the flow. The reality is, I don’t have a dream YET, but I wish that it could be just as inspiring as Martin Luther King’s dream.
In conclusion, the video turned out to be great; it answered the driving question with various perspectives and evidence. The only downside is that I didn’t gather enough original footage, and the video had too many B-rolls.
If I were to do this project again, I would probably spend less time talking about MLK’s legacy and expand more on other stories to support my answer. But the past is in the past; in PLP, we only advance. Seeya next project!