31 Jul, 2011
(a peek inside) the Ottawa River Pathway
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Multimedia experiments
I was going to let this video speak for itself but I cannot help writing a preamble.
I love visual media, I really do. When I was studying journalism at Carleton my focus was on multimedia storytelling, although at the time it meant something a little different. It was radio and television. I loved my radio classes; recording interviews and editing them together with sticky tape and a razor blade in a tiny little room. It was hands on and incredibly satisfying and the fact that sound could tell a story fascinated me. I loved my TV classes too, and in my fourth year I took a documentary film class in which my classmates and I created a couple of really neat projects. One of the documentaries I produced went against the wishes of my instructor. I insisted on doing a piece about Tom Green but my instructor thought the idea was ridiculous because according to him, Tom was just a kid who wan’t going anywhere. (Ha ha on him, right?) Another piece I worked on was about Beechwood Cemetery. It was essentially part of a “the business of death” series I was working on that extended into my magazine and print classes as well. (It was all I could talk about for awhile. I must have been a great person to hang around with!)
I graduated, and life intervened. Instead of going one direction I went another, and didn’t get to fulfill my dream of becoming a documentary film producer. I’ve had good fortune to work on some cool projects in recent years: a script for a promotional video about an explosives testing facility, for a children’s summer camp, and one for a secondary-school level educational video about the Canadian government. This has only whet my appetite. I hope to do more, more of my own.
Storytelling with pictures and sound is thrilling to me. Words are great, hey, I love words, but sound and images take your story to another level altogether. And lucky for us, we live in a time when regular people can pursue their passions on their own time, without the need of tiny rooms, razor blades, and heavy cameras.
That’s why I’m very happy that the blog is taking a bit of a new turn and entering the age of vlogging (a.k.a video blogging). It’s going to be the occasional video post, not a whole new format, BUT STILL. I thought it deserved a preamble. :)
I want to explore more of Ottawa in this format and share these stories with you, but I need to state for the record that Mark plays a giant role in this, as it would be impossible to go down this road without him. The video below is rightfully his and he deserves full credit. I look forward to many creative collaborations with him in the future.
Anyway, that’s the preamble! I’ll try not to be so wordy next time. Without further ado, here’s (a peek inside) the Ottawa River Pathway. It’s a three-minute summary of his commute along the Ottawa River and what he sees along the way. We would love your feedback.
