Pride Month Video

This piece is an Adobe Premiere video project that I completed for COM 561: Multimedia Content Creation in Summer 2022. My instructor was Justin Barnes.

My overall objective in this class was to create content for PeaceHealth Pride, the LGBTQ+ employee resource group for which I was a Co-Chair. This work was intended to illustrate the ways in which visual content can promote diversity, equity and inclusion. I was able to use these projects as a starting point to create multiple campaigns digital and print campaigns. The first two themes were “You Belong Here” and “The Power of Pride.” As someone who identifies as queer, this is a topic that is very personal for me.

For this assignment, my goal was to design and produce a promotional video which we could share in September during LGBTQ+ Ally Week. Recruiting ally members was an important part of our strategy and this video help us achieve that. My concept for the campaign was “The Power of Pride.” I broke the content out into four sections: The Power of Pride, The Power of Images, The Power of Language and The Power of Allyship.

To tell my story, I wanted to utilize video clips, still photos and audio snippets. I first developed my script and then organized the components of my story in a storyboard. I made a list of the potential video clips I wanted to capture and then hit the streets of Bellingham to collect them using my iPhone’s camera. I went to an overpass that has rainbow color railings and took videos of the traffic from multiple angles. Then I headed downtown. At Penny Lane Antique Mall, I shot their selection of Pride masks, buttons, flags and magnets which are available for sale. Then I headed further up Holly Street and recorded several different banners that hang from Street lights. The afternoon sun was perfect and there was a lovely breeze blowing the leaves of the trees behind them. At Third Planet, a gift store, I captured video of pronoun pins and buttons, Pride flags and mugs and other swag. I then recorded traffic in front of a wonderful public mural next to the store. Heading out of downtown, I visited The Ragfinery, a store with lovely Pride-themed window displays and then headed home to take photos and videos of myself displaying my pronouns. I felt slightly creepy asking businesses for their permission to record.

For our earlier audio story assignment, I collected more than an hour of interviews. I re-used a few of the clips from that assignment as well as additional recordings about pronouns, flags and the importance of Pride. I wanted this video to have a more lighthearted feel than my emotional audio story so I chose not to include the more somber clips. I then recorded myself narrating for several sections. For my still images, I was able to strategically take photos of our caregivers at recent Pride events. I supplemented them with a few stock photos and also added stock videos to help tell my story. For brand consistency, the music I used was the same piece from my audio story.

Prior to this class, I had never used Premiere Pro so I had another steep learning curve. I was relieved that we completed the Audition assignments prior to this module so I was able to utilize the techniques we used in our audio stories and tutorials. I learned the hard way that Adobe Premiere no longer supports the graphics card, etc., in my three-year-old personal computer. I bought it specifically to accommodate graphic design programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign so I wasn’t expecting to run into technical challenges with Premiere. After struggling for several days with missing features and constant crashing, I gave up and used my work computer to complete the assignments.

I have a tendency to pack too much content into videos and this project was no exception. The first draft of my video story was seven minutes long. I managed to get it down to half that length for the rough draft I submitted for feedback but still needed to shave off 45 seconds to meet the requirements of the assignment. My video transitions felt rushed and there were a few issues with phantom shots that I needed to fix between some clips. There were also a few pauses that could be shortened.

The volume of different speakers was inconsistent so I spent some time polishing the levels. Because the transitions between clips ended up much shorter than those in my audio story, I decided not to edit the volume of my background music between audio clips. I added fades at the beginning and end of the video story but left the volume low in the middle.

Overall, I was pleased with my work, and this turned out to be a nice video story that we used to promote PeaceHealth Pride.