PROJECT: NC State RED-i Reels

Over the past three years, I have created a reel each fall semester of NC State RED-i's past videography projects in order to demonstrate our services in that media and to generate excitement regarding the new academic school year. Much of the footage in each of the videos is repeated, especially comparing 2020 to 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions, but I think viewing the three videos as a set offers good insight into the growth I have seen in my video editing skills over this period of time.

Being entirely self-taught, I have immersed myself in the technical and creative world of videography through RED-i and independent learning these past three years and feel that a great deal of improvement can be seen during this time.

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This first video I created was right after my hiring at RED-i in September of 2019. Jumping into the position of social media manager, I wanted to start the fall semester with a three part overview of the work RED-i offered, showcasing our photography, graphic design, and videography skills independently.

I decided the best way to showcase our videography services was through a 1 minute reel. I was challenged when it came to the footage available, as fall 2019 was the first semester RED-i worked to really organize past media in a Google Drive. This meant I had to do a lot of digging and often only had final, colorized products to work with. Between full videos of some projects and older, low quality footage of others, I wasn't set up for the easiest first professional video edit.

That all being said, I really enjoyed the challenge and thought it was a great start for me!

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My second reel was made under significantly different circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States hard earlier the same year, so there was a lot of uncertainty going into the fall semester when it came to how NC State was going to work to control cases and what that meant for RED-i and the services we offered.

The fall semester took a big shift pretty early on as our school saw a large spike in cases. Despite the continually changing circumstances, RED-i moved forward and adapted to each change as best we could, so I ended up making a reel to showcase our recent work and maintain engagement on Instagram.

The expansion of footage available to me that year makes this reel appear so much more advanced compared to the first. I would say a lot of my editing tactics remained similar but I definitely worked to play more with cuts between clips and I think that is evident in this year's reel.

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While we didn't have as many projects as we would in a normal year, this past year has handed us the opportunity to take on some really large projects (see: Art2Wear and DanceVisions projects). These projects not only provided a lot of footage but they also offered me plenty of chances to edit and work on my videography skills.

Because of this expansion in my experience, I wanted to take a different approach to this year's reel. This format of video is challenging as it is hard to create a story out of seemingly unrelated footage, but without a story videos often fall flat when it comes to maintaining the attention of viewers and creating meaning.

Knowing this, I worked to make this reel a story about the creativity and drive within RED-i and its staff. By beginning the video with specific clips of the staff, using color changes to allude to the shifts in the content, and including a quote from Francis Ford Coppola (director of The Godfather), I was able to construct a narrative that was more likely to draw viewers in. I'm extremely proud of how it turned out, so I hope anyone else watching it enjoys as well.