Hello!

Stories are everywhere. They make up almost all the ideas we share with one another. Without them we couldn’t even communicate with one another. Even this blog post is a story.

We recently took a trip to the Canadian Rockies. It was for two projects, one in humanities and one in Maker. In Maker, we learned about how we can use the moving image to tell a story. We learned this through 4 videos. We also focused on the questioning competency which was visible EVERYWHERE, which was surprising to me. Speaking of questions, the driving question for this project was “How Might I use the moving image to tell a story?”. Here’s what I learned from each video.

At home Video
This was the first video I made when trip 1 was away. It Centers around what interests me. I think this shows the questioning idea through the fact that I had to question myself to be able to make it, and it shares with others about me since it’s published online now. I’m proud that I made this in a short period of time and that it’s still good quality. I think I also really reflected who I am well while keeping the video interesting with different shots, and visuals. Next time I would add music to push it to the next level.

Investigative

This is the video I worked the hardest on. I pushed myself to create something I could be proud of. This shows the questioning idea because it was all about questions. The whole point of the video was to ask questions to a variety of people to get an answer. I showed this through my interviews. I’m proud of the quality I was able to produce, it has a voiceover, music, and a bunch of shots. I’m also proud that I didn’t get really mad at myself when I had to do revisions (as outlined in my learning plan). I grew in the process of making this. Next time I would fine-tune my thesis before leaving. I found it hard to make my video later when I realized that I asked the wrong questions at the moment. I would also make sure I got good quality video and audio from all my clips (that’s why I had to revise), I lost a lot of really good content because of that. This tells the story of our humanities project which you can read about here.

Silent

This was probably my favourite video to shoot, I liked making it and my group was great. The skill we used the most for this one was filming on-site, which we learned in class before leaving. We used close-ups, sound effects and exaggerated facial expressions to tell a story. This shows that questioning idea, through sharing ideas is the most important. It took a lot of teamwork to come up with a story spine for this video (like an outline of what’s going to happen.) I’m proud of how quickly we got our shots and planned out where the shots would be when we got to the ghost town. We also adapted the story once we were which required us to think on our feet. Next time I would add more closeups to make the feelings of the characters clear. This tells the story of two thieves trying to steal the necklace of a wealthy woman, and failing dramatically.

tik tok

I changed my mind this one was the most fun. I filmed this with Ailie throughout the whole trip. We filmed at almost every stop, though not all the clips made the cut. My favourite one is the one on the boat! See if you can spot it…. This one also shows teamwork, we had to find each other quickly in the crowds so we could get the clip before we moved on to the next stop. I’m proud of all the cool backgrounds we got into the video and of how we got so many shots even though we were really busy on the trip. Next time I would try to have all the clips have the same ratio of us to the background so that the transitions are smoother. The story of his video is how we went to all these places!

All of this has led me to my answer to the driving question (it’s How might I use the moving image to tell a story? Just in case you forgot :D)

I can use the moving image to tell a story in a bunch of different ways. Videos should have a clear beginning middle and end, good audio and visual but that’s just scratching the surface. It’s also important for good videos to ask questions and make the audience FEEL something, to take them on a journey.

Until next time!

Neko