Award Winning Water PSA

Last April my partner Shelby McLeod and I won 1^st place in the Algonquin & Lakeshore Catholic District School Board 2011 World Water Day Video Contest. We filmed and edited the water Public Service Announcement (PSA) titled “Water Is A Human Right Don’t Let That Right Be Taken From You!” last year in our grade 11 Com Tech class. The importance of this video is to show people that water should not be something people have to pay for. It also tries to remind us that a lot of people in the world have a limited access to water and have to rely on collecting it from alternative and sometimes unclean sources such as puddles or rain. To film the PSA we had to find different sources of water to get our point across. We filmed in the Holy Cross cafeteria and hallways, in my house, by the pool in my back yard and numerous places downtown around city hall including, the fountain in Market Square and the Kingston harbor. The PSA was filmed with a standard tape camcorder and edited in Final Cut Pro on a Mac Desk top. It was an amazing experience because we had full control of where we filmed and the fact that we worked so well together as a team. Our goal was to do the best we could in putting our point across about water being a human right and the fact that everyone should have access to clean water, we never imagined we would win this contest. We just wanted people to understand our thoughts on the topic. 

Photography

Architectural Photo

The first type of photos we took in class was the architecture photo. To take these photos our class was taken to downtown Kingston to find buildings that fit in to 12 categories and take pictures of them. The photo I chose was one I took of St. Mary’s Cathedral I picked this picture because it involves a lot of the themes we had to look for in our picture-taking excursion. This photo includes, the religion aspect because it is a picture of a cathedral, heritage because it was one of the first buildings built in Kingston, it is framed by the leaves and has a lot of detail with the brickwork and crosses. It was a lot of fun taking the photos and learning about architecture and how to take good out door photos.

Head Shot

The other photography project we worked on as the studio portrait project. For this project we used the Nikon D5000 to take the picture. We also used professional flashes to produce a Rembrandt light which when the photo is taken produces a triangle of light over the eye of the non-illuminated side of your subjects face. The camera settings were set to an ISO 200, a shutter speed of 1/125 to match the speed of the flashes and an F-stop of 16 to allow less light in, to make the background darker. It was a lot of fun but it took a long time to get the camera to the right levels to take a good picture and it was a very interesting experience thinking outside the box to take a creative photo.

Video

Introduction/Bumper

The first video productions I made in class were the intros/bumpers for the main tech events going on this year. The first one I created using the Mac Desktop was for the 25^th Anniversary video for Holy Cross Secondary School. Some of the software I used included Soundtrack Pro for the music and chime sound effects, Motion for the feathers unveiling the logo and Final Cut Pro to not only put it all together but to add the motion and the ripple effect on the logo. I also created one for the KASSAA Game of the Week using the same hardware and software in the same way. Along with the other two I created one to be used for the Holy Cross Television (HCTV) podcasts we do at the school. The feel I was trying to communicate for each one was something that made sense to the topic for example; for the 25^th Anniversary bumper I wanted something formal to suit the occasion, for KASSAA I wanted something that represented sports and for the HCTV bumper I made it to simulate the beginning of a news broadcast.


Anniversary Video

The other video production I helped make was a part of the Holy Cross 25^th Anniversary video. My group and I worked on the What Makes Holy Cross Special section of the video. I was the videographer specializing in the video filming and editing where I filmed the subjects of the video and in some cases the background shots, chose the best looking clip, edited out the blue screen and added the effects on the background all using Final Cut Pro on the Mac Desktop. The reason we used the blue screen is so that we can take the video of the person we are interviewing and edit out the blue screen and put in the background which is footage of what the subject is talking about. Altogether it was a challenging but fun experience getting to see what people who have graduated or are still at the school think Holy Cross.

Graphic Design

Personal Logo

For my personal logo I used InDesign on a Mac Desktop in the Holy Cross Com Tech Room. The design I selected is known as a clapperboard a well known item in the film and TV industry. It represents my goal to become as well known as the clapperboard in the same industries. The colors of silver and gold around the black are representative of wealth and success I hope to achieve with a production company named after me.

DVD Case Cover

Using a Mac version of Adobe Photoshop, and the same Mac Desktop I created a DVD case cover for Holy Cross Secondary School’s 25^th Anniversary video.  For my design concept I kept the front simple to represent the school and mark the anniversary occasion. On the back I wanted to give a picture of the many different activities over the years at our very busy school. I used apple chancery a fancy but legible typeface for the front and spine. On the back I used a font that could be clearly seen over the photos but not take away from the pictures. I selected green as the main color, which is one of the school’s colors. Although the other color is silver I used white instead for the font because it is close and shows up better. The 25^th Anniversary logo is the same used by the school for all the anniversary advertising and the picture of the school is from a photo disk of images and shows what the school looks like today. The collage of pictures on the back captures photos from the past ad present and includes a shot of the groundbreaking ceremony for the school.

Artist Introduction

Hello, my name is Tyler Doucet I am a grade 12 Communications Technologies student at Holy Cross Secondary School and I am a part of the Specialist High Skills Major (SHSM) program, a focus program in Com Tech. I have taken Com Tech in grade 10, 11 and 12 and I really had fun in every part of it. I actually enjoyed filming and editing videos the most because when you finish a project that you have put a lot of time and effort into it feels really good that you did your best and created a piece you know people will enjoy watching. Taking and editing photos in Photoshop was also really fun because in taking the photos you learn a lot about perspective, angles, color, mergers, position, what shots look good and what shots do not look as good. Through SHSM it has really helped my artistic side of taking a photographs.  Designing logos in InDesign was a little more difficult for me than the production aspect because it involved drawing, which I am not particularly good at but I’m getting better. After high school I plan on going to either Ryerson University and take their Film Studies Program or their Radio, Television, Audio/Video Production program or I might go to NASCAD and take their Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Film, in order to go into Video & TV Production when I finish University. I am also kind of interested in the programs available at Guelph Humber along the same lines. I would love to hear form any body with experience in any of these programs. Tips on how to launch a career in TV and Film would be cool too.