In collaboration with the Museum of Vancouver, I worked in a team of four to create a 5-minute documentary featuring a Vancouver collector to be featured in a future exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver, All Together Now.

During the pre-production process, I helped create a moodboard by providing a verbal description of how I envisioned the documentary would look, suggesting the idea of letting the collection tell the collector’s story. I also created some sketches for the storyboard, and helped put a storyboard together.

My storyboard sketches (Full storyboard here)

During the filming process, I took the interviewer role for day one of filming with a list of questions we wanted the interviewee – the collector – to address. I helped handle the camera and collect b-roll.

Using Adobe AfterEffects and Premiere Pro, I took up the task of editing the introduction of the documentary. While editing the footage, I kept in mind our focus showing the collector’s personality through her collection and things in her apartment rather than through her physical appearance. With that in mind, I reminded my team members to show the collector’s face when she is more expressive. I also created the title card for the exercise records. A teammate had found inspiration online and wanted us to do something similar, but she did not know how. So I took on creating the motion graphics using what my teammate had in mind. The first iteration had a neon sign theme that I felt did not suit the documentary’s mood, so I created another based on one of the record covers owned by our designated collector.

Exercise record used as a reference for title motion graphics

For the final stages of making the film, I searched for music that could suit the film’s mood and compiled a list to give to my teammates to listen to. I put together all the sequences made by my teammates – requesting they make edits that I could not fix on my end – and inserted the music we had agreed on. I realized early on in my editing process that there would be issues with putting together the sequences with the music already inserted, so I asked my teammates to provide the video files without the music. By doing that it gave me more freedom to edit the music. As I was putting together the film, I did some additional colour correction and adjusted some of the timing of clips.

While working on this project I learned how to plan ahead, film under a tight schedule and share my concerns with my team regarding the project progress. I also learned how to apply some motion tracking effects to the introduction and how to edit audio levels so the resulting sound quality is good.