Water is Life
Land is Witness

Introduction and Concept

The final project of the course IAT 344 Moving Images is a micro-documentary based on a topic chosen by our group to illustrate our skills of technology, narrative and working with a client. Our group worked with Bill Reid Gallery to make a video for their Indigenous Women topic exhibition, “Water honours us”. The topic of our video centered on the relationship between indigenous women, water and environment. The project required comprehensive skills and the process was complete since we need to start from the beginning to the final video.

Production Process

The process started with figuring out our interviewees then coming up with the interview questions. At first, our interview questions were pretty general because our topic was abstract and we have no idea about our interviewees, such as what topics they are sensitive to, or information about themselves. After the first interview, we gradually became familiar with the interview process and began to know about the group of indigenous women and their communities. Once we got several footage, we started to create rough narrative line and storyboard.

The shooting process also required camera, lighting and audio set up skills so that we could catch shot of multiple scene sizes from different angles and natural-look light. We totally conducted four interviews over three months. The editing was iterative in order to meet the Gallery’s and interviewees’ requirement. With the addition of more interviewees, we need to rearrange the footage in video editing software Premiere Pro to make a more fluent narrative line. Besides organizing the order of footage, we also need to deal with the audio and color of footage.

Challenge and Reflection

Since we have five interviewees in total, the structure of narrative line is a big challenge for our group to figure out. With the increase of footage we got, we need to break the original storyline and came up with a brand new one. However, I think it's a successful project because of the fluent narrative and the sound effect.