Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog! Yep, that’s right, another blog post is coming at ya. So what’s this post about? Well, let’s start off with we have to create a video, like every project this year. In this video, it’s about a historical event or individual that effected Canada in the 1800s. Anyways, let’s jump straight into this post.

The video we are creating is based off of a filming company named Historica Canada. Every video they create is about an significant event or person in the history of Canada. The only thing that is different is that the videos have a twist to it. It’s only 1 minute long. Some you’ll find, including ours, is about 1 minute and 2-3 seconds long but that’s fine. Within this short amount of time, they have to tell a story about the person or event.Their videos are actually really well made and we are trying to create one of our own(ones that have not been made but them yet).

Our Video

Before we get to the process and revisions we made to our video, I want to start this post off with our final product. For now, I won’t tell you what the video is about but I will tell you it’s about a person named Billy Green. Enjoy the video and feel free to comment down below how you think the video is!

After watching the video, I hope you understood what happened. Now, we can go deeper into the learning process.

The Process

Let’s first start with the driving question. How do the stories of our history shape our identity today? This is the question we will continue to ask ourselves during the process of learning! Like most of the projects, we are put into groups. My group included Jason, Caleb, Jackson, and I. Our topic was Battles and Rebellions during the 1800s. Now there are many different stories we can tell in that period of time so we narrowed it down to the War of 1812. More specifically, the Battle of Stoney Creek which was one of the Battles during the War of 1812. In that Battle, we wrote a story about a significant person. Billy Green. Now you’ve already seen the video and every part to our video must be historically accurate and we hope that’s the case. 

Billy Green

During the process of making our project, we did a lot of stepping stones. These are the steps that help us reach our milestones. Don’t worry, I won’t make this a step by step process of what we did but a general idea of what we did. To get a good visualization of our video, we had to write a screenplay and a storyboard. These things helped me when so I knew I was on track of what I’m filming. We also did a lot of work on practicing angles and something called a master. The master is basically a complete shot of one scene from only one angle. Our group did multiple masters for each scene so we were able to cut the scenes so we have multiple angles. Obviously, we did a lot of filming and 3 drafts. Down below, are the different drafts if you want to see how our film has developed.

Draft 1

In draft 1, we had a lot of places we had to fix. The scene where Billy Green(Caleb), talks to John Harvey(Jason), was way to sudden. Caleb went from running to walking really quickly and it wasn’t a very good transition. We had to completely redo the battle scene at the end because it happened way to quickly and people don’t know what’s going on. We also had to re-film some parts since not all group members were able to make it that day to film.

Draft 2

After making the battle scene, talking scenes a lot better, we just had minor tweaks that we have to make. Something that would’ve added is music. We also had to add titles on the bottom to make our video make sense.

Draft 3

This draft is the draft that you saw at the beginning of the video. In this draft, everything is done including music, titles, and transitions. Overall, if you take a look between draft 1 and 3, I think our video improved a lot.

Update!

We emailed Ryan Barnett and Joanne Archibald, from Historica Canada. The creators of Historica Minutes! We want to thank them for the great feedback they gave us on our History Minutes! Looking back at the videos, there are definitely room for Improvement.

 Conclusion

Almost there. Just one more thing to talk about. A personal reflection like I always do at the end of each post. So what are things that helped me or learned in this unit? Before we go into me, I want to start with teamwork. I think our teamwork in this unit was amazingly good. Each group member tried their best to support each other and not shut down each other’s ideas. Teamwork doesn’t necessarily mean who did more work but how did we work together. The first thing that I think really helped me is learning about masters(Thanks to a special visiter). It was a lot easier to cut the scenes and make multiple angles out of a master than just filming one angle at a time. Something else that I learned wasn’t really in the technical side but the content side. Without Billy Green leading the British to win the Battle of Stoney Creek, the Americans had a chance of taking over Upper Canada. Since the British won, it stopped the Americans from conquering Upper Canada. 

Anyways, this will be the end to another blog post and I hope you’ve enjoyed our video. For now, I will see you next time. Bye.