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

Questions of Copyright and Value: Where Does Inspiration Come From?

By Dan Sohner

Have you ever had an idea stolen? Copied maybe? It’s not a particularly great feeling. But now imagine that that idea ends up on the cover of, let’s say, National Geographic.

Photographer Tim Kemple has something to say about that. In short, Kemple made an image of an iconic rock climber on an iconic rock climb and another photographer, Jimmy Chin, made a nearly identical image, which he sold to National Geographic.

Jimmy Chin's image:

national_geographic_image

Tim Kemple's image:

tim_kemple_image

You can imagine the conversation that happened. Mr. Kemple wasn’t very happy and Mr. Chin didn’t seem to see anything wrong.

Where does copyright begin and end? What is intellectual property, really? Is this ethical?

Where does inspiration truly come from?

As a creative person, I think it is sometimes hard to ask yourself where an idea came from or why you decided to create something in a certain way. When you start asking those questions, you start to discover your personal style, which then inevitably relates directly back to everything in this world which inspires you and has most likely inspired someone else at some point.

One of the hardest things we have to face as creatives is constantly figuring out how to stay relevant, fresh and innovative. It can be difficult to maintain uniqueness when there is such a saturation of content these days. But is the issue really about the physical production of a similar image, or is it more about the idea of something you made and believe is truly unique being recreated? Does this lessen the value of the unique way you see the world?

It is up to us as creatives to draw our own boundaries and direct the evolution of photography and video production in the manor we see fit because the conversations that arise are serving to shape our social values as a whole.

When producing content for clients, we have to make sure we can evolve the conversation while still maintaing the point and integrity of the story. As storytellers we give voice to those who may not have had the opportunity to share, and their voice is what inspires us to continue developing content. Even if the story we're telling has already been told, maybe it hasn't been told in this particular way by this particular person, and that interviewee getting their voice and message heard is what matters.

I think the point of visual storytelling, whether it's through photography or videography, is to present a platform that helps us all evolve the way we understand the world around us. We have to build off of things people can relate to and in doing that, have to accept the fact that some inspiration is borrowed. We have to tap into the collective conscience in order to build off of what has previously been done.

Shared experiences, like the ones we share through media, are some of the most powerful things we can feel as humans, only to be trumped, of course, by having an image on the cover of National Geographic…

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.

Introducing New Team Members

  Spring greetings!

We have some great new content lined up to share with you throughout these upcoming months.

First things first, meet Chloe and Dan.

Chloe came to us as an intern, hungry for more knowledge and experience in the video production world. She admired our mission, having a passion both for working with nonprofits and using video and photography as mediums to tell the untold story. With a background in journalism from Colorado State University, she was eager to develop her skills in that field and gain some real-world experience. Her natural knack for listening and narrative development quickly earned her a spot on the team as a Creative Production Assistant, where she is able to get her hands dirty in a variety of areas. She enjoys being a jack of all trades. She is currently working on building up Chance’s website, attending shoots to assist the team, blog planning, updating Stories Without Borders.com, organizing video projects and narrative development as an assistant editor.

What inspires her the most?

“When I watch a finished draft of a story we’ve told, a story that I’ve been involved with from start to finish, I feel incredibly inspired. Creating a story takes so much work, so much attention to detail, so much listening and attentiveness to the people being featured...it’s amazing when it all comes together.”

Dan came to us as a skilled craft editor.

He came to Colorado by bicycle in 2013 and just recently landed at Chance Multimedia. Living in Ohio, he had attended Ohio University for Photojournalism and Film and held a position as a staff photographer at the Columbus Dispatch. While freelancing in Colorado for outdoor lifestyle clients, Daniel was looking for something bigger which would help him give back to a larger community. As an Editor and Cinematographer, he is able to help tell stories which, in turn, help inspire people to think outside of their immediate lives. Daniel has experience working with nonprofits such as Local Matters in Columbus, Ohio and Paradox Sports in Boulder, Colorado and is using those experiences to help communicate the stories we here at Chance Multimedia are passionate about.

What inspires him the most?

“I am inspired by passionate people or groups who are not afraid to stand up and make their voices heard. We often work with exceptionally driven subjects and try to tell their stories with as much conviction as they tell them. Being able to feel that energy and weave it into the work we are doing here is a very inspirational feeling.”

Catching Up in Denver

Greetings! Since we took a blogging hiatus for a while we need to play a little catch up, like old friends catching up over a cup of coffee. We’ve been up to quite a lot.

It’s been interesting to see what stories have come our way in the last year. We have felt the changes happening all over Colorado in our own business. Because of our mission to tell the untold story, to enlighten individuals with narratives of great people doing great things, we are excited by the storytelling opportunities we are seeing all over Colorado. Things are shifting.

Some shifts are positive -- there is a movement to live healthier, build self-sufficient communities and become more active in one’s own city. Other changes are posing a great challenge to people that have been here for years -- new developments are driving people out of their homes as many cannot afford the skyrocketing prices of living.

Chance Multimedia strives to capture both sides of the picture. We like to follow people and organizations that are making positive changes, and we think it’s important to be a voice for those that are feeling trampled on by the rapid growth in this city.

One story came our way in the last year that inspired us and caused us to contemplate our own community. The story of the Healthy Places Initiative, developed by The Colorado Health Foundation, and what’s happening within three communities in Colorado. These communities, full of families and lively cultural diversity, had room to improve: In some places they lacked streetlights at night, parks for their children to play in, bike paths to ride on...

We have been running around with our cameras following the actions of the Healthy Places Initiative members as they set out to build those things that were lacking, celebrate with their community members, and cultivate stronger relationships between neighbors. They’re creating pride in their community and embracing health in a whole new way.

Watching this growth and change makes us reflect on what we’re doing in our own lives and communities, Do we feel the sense of excitement and hopefulness in our own neighborhood that our lenses are capturing in these three ever-evolving places?

We think so. Jessica is involved in the Sustainable Food Policy Council, Chloe volunteers at the Denver Film Center down the street, James and Jessica participate in vegetable gardening with the neighbors on their block, and we run races in City Park to support causes we’re passionate about. These things excite us, and we would like to look for other ways to be engaged in the lively Denver community this year.

There’s always more that can be done. It just takes some vision and a few strong individuals to start moving forward and others will inevitably follow.

We are pleased that the work we’ve been doing with Healthy Places not only inspires us, but will inspire other communities around Denver to make the same impacts in their own neighborhoods.

We’re just glad we can be here to capture and share it all.

It’s an exciting time for Denver, and we have more interesting stories in the works that embrace these great movements.

All this talk of growth and change reminded us… we have some new team members to introduce to you next week!