My Independent Professional Project: a promotional video for Red River College

 

March 10, 2011 marked the end of my six month project. The result was the video you just saw.

Working for Red River College's Diversity and Immigrant Student Support Department was an awesome experience with practical key learning I would be able to apply in my professional career as a communicator.

Shooting, editing, and producing a video may sound tough, but it could be accomplished with weeks of careful planning and advise from an instructor.

What worked well for me was planning weekly meetings with my client. This helped a lot because it required me to report to my client recent progress with the product, the video. I needed to tell the client how the video was coming along and the only way around that was to do the actual work.

Once you've managed your deadline and target delivery date, you could then work the small details into your project. In a sense, you were working backwards. You worked from the delivery date then managed the time you had to actually produce the video.

One of the biggest challenges of producing a video was shooting subjects. This by far was the toughest part of my entire subject. I remembered sending at least twenty emails to groups and individuals to come to Princess Street Campus (The Roblin Centre in the Exchange District Campus now) where I had the camera setup on a tripod to film interviews.

After all the interviews, filming B-roll was next on the list. This was also tough because it required organizing logistics to shoot outside of the campus. As seen in the video, we shot at The Forks Market and various places in Notre Dame Campus. Having your own vehicle proved to be very useful as there was also a ton of equipment to lug around.

The finished product was a video that was useful for the department and something that I was very proud of. The marketing manager at Red River College had approved the video last month and would be uploaded to the official college's video channel.

I was really pleased and happy to be a part of this project. The people I worked with and the connections I had made through this experience was something I'd always carry with me no matter where I go or work.