Video Narrative: Why Dublin?

During the Online Journalism class we were asked to produce a short film with the theme Movement and Progression. Having looked at various examples in class about how to tell a digital story I decided to make my video narrative about foreigners who have moved to Dublin. 

The idea came up from my own experience of living in Dublin as an expat. It is funny how you can notice peculiar habits, that seem natural in a culture, when you look at it from the outside. Moreover, I also wanted to take the opportunity to express how glad I am to be here and how beautiful Dublin is. My project is a 3 minute long film speaking with people from four different nationalities explaining what they like and dislike in Dublin and the reason why they are living here. 

O'Connell Bridge

Methodology

            First thing I did was to gather people to take part in my project. I contacted some friends from Germany, Spain, Denmark and Brazil. After that I thought about what kind of questions to ask them and what type of things I would like them to talk to me about. Then I got together the necessary equipment, which were a tripod I borrowed from DBS, and my camera. I shot the short film in three days. In the first one, I met with the people in Phoenix Park, because It’s a quiet place. So it’s good for the audio, it has beautiful scenario and it represents Dublin well. On the same day I shot the last person in another park in the city centre area. Then on my second and third days I took some pictures and shot some clips of parts of Dublin. Parts that, in my view, symbolise Dublin, and that were mentioned by the participants of the video. Then, I edited everything on Windows Movie Maker. I used royalty free music from the website called Incompetech, which was also edited on Windows Movie Maker.

Equipment used

Camera Canon 500D

Tripod

Windows Movie Maker

Youtube

Trial and error

The first problem I encountered was to see that you can’t count always on people. I had two other friends who agreed to take part in the video and everything was set. But on the day they didn’t show up. So I had to find other people to replace them in the last minute. Also another friend was called into work in the afternoon we were supposed to shoot the video, and I had to reschedule another time to meet him during the day. It was very hard then to find a place that would fit to the atmosphere of the video and wouldn’t be very noisy. With this I learned that it is always good to be prepared for anything, have a plan B and to have one or two people more than necessary just in case.

Secondly I had a problem with the audio. In some parts of it there were a lot of background noise. I had to shoot the last person in a different park, which is located in the city centre. What wasn't a great idea as there was a lot of background noise. Also some time I did some mistakes with the frame. In this way, the hair/head of one of the participants was a bit out of frame as he started moving while he was talking. From this I learned, that I always need to leave some space on the frame because the person will move and probably come out of frame. Another problem I had was learning how to use a tripod. It was hard in the beginning to leave its legs all on the same level. It was the first time that I used one, but with the help of a friend I managed to get it straight.



I really enjoyed producing this video narrative. In the end it was simpler than I expected it to be. I certainly feel more confident to produce other videos in the future.

Here's my short film: