defining a brand
When I was hired at IGNITE, the organization underwent a re-branding from its former name, Humber Students' Federation. As students were often confused about how much control Humber College had over the organization, the goal of the rebrand was to make it clear that IGNITE is largely independent from Humber College, and focused on student services and engagement. As the first videographer to work under the new name and brand, I was given the freedom to help shape the voice of IGNITE by producing video content aimed at engaging with Humber students on a more personal level.
To this end, I worked within a team of Web Content Editors to create a Student Profile series, which highlighted talented Humber students from different fields. While my fellow team members focused on written, article-based student profiles, I produced video profiles. I decided to focus attention on the personal stories behind each individual, and framed each video in a documentary-style interview punctuated by showcases of the subject's talents or environment.
challenges
Before working at IGNITE, many of my video projects were completed in small production teams, which meant that I was able to focus solely on one role. At IGNITE, I was responsible for end-to-end production on each of my videos, which meant that I had to wear many hats, so to speak. I had to balance my time on each project between pre-production tasks like identifying and managing talent, production tasks like filming logistics and cinematography, and post-production tasks such as editing, audio engineering, and creating motion graphics. Needless to say, I had my hands full, and quickly gained a reputation for never leaving the office. Ultimately, this experience allowed me to become a jack-of-all-trades in video production, and I eagerly look forward to refining this in a studio where someone who can wear many hats is valued.
One consistent challenge which presented itself in all of the various student profile videos that I produced was crafting a convincing personal story behind each video which was also concise- because of the nature of social media, trending videos need to be short. Typically, this meant that I devoted a large portion of the post-production on processing and stitching together audio soundbites convincingly while staying true to the student's original voice- not to mention ensuring that there was enough b-roll footage during filming to cover up this editing. Below, you can listen to an example of this; the first is a raw interview clip, and the second is one that I have edited.