Capturing Video Stories Over Time

This year we wrapped up a three-year video project with The Colorado Health Foundation, and we've been reflecting on the experiences we had in different communities. 

We were tasked with capturing a three-year grant process in three different communities - Westwood, Lamar and Arvada - getting to know each one and watching them grow into more abundant, stronger, physically active and healthy neighborhoods. We captured the growth in each place from the very first meeting to the last, following the key community leaders as they gathered around their neighbors and made decisions about what would make their community healthier, including implementing new parks, sidewalks, bike trails, neighborhood gatherings and youth sports programs.

The result was one video per community per year highlighting the different themes of the year and stories of communities leaders who had grown throughout the process. We are so lucky to have been the chosen video producers for the project, and we grew with each community along the way, as we were in active conversations with each place and captured their greatest milestones in a long, rewarding process. 

It takes a different approach to work on such a fluid video project, over a long period of time. It took a lot of relationship maintenance, changes of plans, reassessment of communications goals, and creativity in translating what had happened in each community over the three years. We enjoy having a window into the intense work and dedication of grassroots activism and the strength communities have when they learn to work together. We were continuously inspired as we developed new and interesting ways to capture their progress, and we built relationships with people that we enjoyed getting the chance to interview over the years. 

These are the kinds of projects we like to go after - ones where we can dive deeply into a community project or process with people that are doing very important work on the ground. If we can develop beautiful videos around such movements and distribute them widely, we believe we can expand people's overall circle of concern and encourage people to act in their own lives, while also creating empathy and understand for those communities and folks they may not interact with every day. 

Check out the videos for each community below!

Healthy Places Lamar

Healthy Places Westwood

Healthy Places Arvada

Ethics and Responsibility in Storytelling

Our team was recently at an introductory meeting with a new client, and the topic of sensitivity and participant care-taking came into the conversation as a concern for the client. We're always glad when it does come to the forefront of a client's mind, because that means our priorities are aligned - they're putting the wellbeing of participants and interviewees in front of the story, which is always where we place the most importance. 

We have strict ethical guidelines in our work not only because of our journalism backgrounds as a team, but because we as individuals uphold strong ethics and values in our own lives, in our own day-to-day interactions with others. We're aware of the power we hold as storytellers with tools, and we ask subjects to make themselves vulnerable through the interview and storytelling process. As such we have a great responsibility to make sure we operate within the comfort of those subjects from beginning to end and beyond. The process involves building relationships, building trust, and intently listening, all keys to crafting beautiful stories and letting people's words be truly felt. 

We start every interview ensuring the participant that they are fully in control of what goes into the story - they don't have to say or answer anything that makes them feel uncomfortable, and even if they do, they have the right to strike it from the record. We're often in sensitive, nuanced situations where people may be hesitant about our presence, and we're sure to never push any boundaries to "get the shot". We are humbled when we're welcomed into communities, into people's lives, and respecting them is our number one priority. 

When our ethics and values are aligned with those we're working with and for, the storytelling process is truly powerful and impactful for all those involved. 

Lessons from the Community

A huge part of our job as videographers and journalists is to listen and absorb.

We do a lot of community work for foundations and nonprofits who activate rural city participation through grant opportunities. The documentation of those community-led processes sends us all over Colorado, to Olathe, Fort Morgan, Manzanola… places we hadn’t even registered on the map. Those places have taught us incredible lessons about life in rural cities, reflecting all the rural communities that make up the majority of this country.

In these tense political times it’s easy to become polarized. The hard thing is cross those lines and listen to the other side. Rural Colorado has a unique voice, a unique perspective, it’s a dichotomy of new and old, immigrants and generations-old families.

When you sit and listen, you have the opportunity to embrace. We’ve heard stories of Somali refugees making the journey to Fort Morgan to work and build better lives, we’ve heard stories of families traveling from Mexico to find peace and security in the small farm town of Olathe, we’ve heard stories of three-generations of families living in San Luis Valley embracing the changes they’ve experienced in their own, small culture. The most important thing is, these people are all now listening to each other through grassroots efforts.

Listening creates empathy, empathy creates movement, movement creates great change, and we’re honored to be able to witness these transformations and capture them in visually beautiful ways.

The Editor's Chair

Chloe: Dan, how long have you been an editor? (Of photography and video) Dan: Ever since I started shooting, I have been editing. A lot of people try to be the “do it all” kind of person. Doing that teaches you a lot about efficiency, but is very difficult to do properly.

Chloe: What do you enjoy about editing?

Dan: I like seeing a project come full circle. I also like interpreting all of the content from the producer and shooter. I have to take the way these two people see the story and make it fit together.

Chloe: What do you do to set up an edit? What is your routine?

Dan: Everything begins with a meticulous file naming system and I start with the end in mind. I want all of the footage to be easily accessible and searchable by subject and date. I will set up the projects with a folder for Footage, Graphics, Music and the Premiere Project File. Knowing that this same folder setup will be imported into Premiere, making sure everything within “Footage” is labeled properly is important.

Inside Premiere, I will set up folders for Footage, Graphics, Music and Sequences. I make sure all of the Sequences are labeled with their contents, the version number and the date, just in case someone else in the office needs to find a specific edit or scene. This also makes naming our exports a lot easier.

Chloe: Do you think about edits you want to make during shooting? How much of the editing process is happening during actual production?

Dan: Absolutely. We have to be very strategic and efficient with our time at every step in the process. We do this so that we aren’t creating extra work for ourselves and so that we can deliver projects to the client in a timely manner. We will show up to a shoot with a rough outline of how we see the edit going, but are careful to leave room for the unexpected. We are always keeping a running list of the shots we have and constantly communicate the shots we are getting to each other to prevent shooting duplicate footage.

Chloe: What are the greatest challenges you have when editing?

Dan: I think the hardest part of editing is being concise with the edit. We often come away with a lot of great content and it’s hard to find a place for all of it. This means that I have to only select the very best content for the final edit.

There are Many Ways to Capture a Scene...

We would like to introduce you to some key players on our team.  They lend us the ability to "extend our reach" and create shots that are even more engaging and interesting. Like hammers and nails - the use of specialized video equipment will have a different outcome and impact on a scene depending on whose hands they're in. It’s up to us to use them to tell a story beautifully and with impact. Introducing... the Movi, the jib and the slider.Movi

The Movi excels at following people and things - a child’s feet running with a soccer ball, a bike’s wheels trailing along a dirt path, or a presenter anxiously walking onto a stage to face the crowd. We use the Movi to capture close-up, intimate movements steadily, providing a visceral experience for the viewer.

MOVI from Chance Multimedia on Vimeo.

Slider

The slider likes to pan the scene. We use it to provide the viewer with a natural path on which to follow the story.

Slider from Chance Multimedia on Vimeo.

Jib

The jib comes in to grab the entire scene.  We use it to create a certain feeling of wonderment in the viewer, an awe that comes with the weightless aerial view of a situation that the jib instantly yields.

Jib from Chance Multimedia on Vimeo.

These are just a few of the tools we utilize in video production to capture scenes in the most unique and visual way. In the hands of talented cinematographers, under the eye of a keen director and woven together through the editing process, they allow us to capture a very intimate and dynamic experience for the viewer. You can see the results of these tools in our work.

Don't forget, we rent our gear out! Check out the Equipment Rentals page for more information.

A Visit from Colorado Academy

Greetings! Yesterday we had a group of bright, young aspiring journalists, storytellers and filmmakers into our offices to give them a tour of the facilities and teach them the ways of a small documentary production company. They had been traveling to news stations and large networks, so Chance Multimedia was quite a different animal for them to see. We hope we were as inspiring to them as they were to us. It's an interesting thing to build a company from the ground up, then finally get to a place where others who are aspiring to be professionals are actually consulting you for advice. In what sometimes feels like a chaotic juggle of projects, timelines and budgets, it's nice to be able to simply and confidently answer the questions of curious, young people. We like being mentors, and we love seeing uninhibited passion. That passion is what drives great work.

So thank you, Colorado Academy students. You are welcome back anytime!

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