Intro
Starting in early 2013, we’ll be carrying out a video project called Amplifying Voices with the support of the Federal Government’s New Horizons for Seniors Program.
Over the course of the winter and early spring, we’ll be conducting interviews with seniors, editing the footage, and posting 8 short videos that explore the realities of seniors.
Through these videos and their accompanying blog posts, statistics, and infographics, our aim is to give viewers a glimpse into what it means to be a senior, and hopefully, to debunk some myths about being a senior citizen.
For this project to work, we’ll need the support of volunteers of all ages!
If you’re interested and would like to know more, give the tentative timeline below a read (or a skim) to see what support is needed, and then get in touch with me, Julian, via email or over the phone at 514-284-9335. Don’t forget to let me know what parts of the project you’d like to be involved with.
Tentative Schedule
- Planning!
- In early January, the core team who will be carrying out the filming and editing will meet two or three times to finalize the project timeline, interview questions, and start contacting client-members for interviews. For this core team of three or four people, we’re specifically looking for folks who already have some experience filming, taking sound, and conducting interviews. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’re unsure whether you have ‘enough’ experience.
- Given the amount of time and level of engagement asked of this core team, we’re offering an honorarium, the value of which will depend on the size of the team and the amount of hours asked.
- Filming!
- The core team will start filming in mid-January, with filming wrapping up at the end of February or in early March. The plan as it stands is to film about one interview per week, and we expect each one-hour interview to take us 4-5 hours from start to finish, including travel and setup/takedown time.
- Transcribing!
- Transcribing (typing up what is said and what happens) the videos is an important step that will really help us edit the raw footage into beautiful final videos. To do this step, we’re looking for 10 volunteers who would each like to take care of one interview. If you’d like to transcribe multiple interviews, that’s excellent! Given that each interview will last approximately one hour, we expect each transcription to take approximately 3 hours. The plan is to transcribe each interview in the week after we film it, so we’ll be transcribing from January to March.
- Editing!
- We’ll be editing the videos into a final product once all of the footage has been transcribed. Editing will be some of the heavier work, and it’s also the step that is the least predictable. We estimate that if we keep it simple, each of the 8 videos will take 3-4 hours to edit… but we’d love to hear your feedback on this point. Naturally, we want the final videos to be wonderfully engaging so that they’ll be devoured by viewers far and wide. As such, we’re looking for folks with experience to help with editing. If you’re not sure you’ve got what it takes, get in touch anyways, and we’ll do our best to find a way to get you to participate… after all, the Roulant is a youth learning organization!As with the core team, given the amount of time and the level of engagement asked for this task, we’re also offering an honorarium to the editor(s), the value of which will depend on the size of the team and the number of hours asked.
- We’ll also need some music to complement the video, so if you have a band (or just like to play music) and you’d like to donate some music, please do get in touch.
- Statistics and Infographics!
- Once the videos are ready, we’ll be putting them up on our website. To complement the anecdotal info in the videos, we’ll be pairing each video with statistics on the topic(s) they explore. For this, we’re looking for 2-3 volunteers to do some statistics-hunting and/or infographics-making. If you love sleuthing around for interesting facts and figures, and/or if you like making statistics easy to understand with pretty pie charts and diagrams, get in touch!
Suggestions
Don’t hesitate to drop us some comments below and let us know what senior-related topics you think we should explore with the Amplifying Voices video project. Nothing is taboo. We want to hear what you’d like to learn about the elders of our fair city; from housing matters to love lives, financial abuse to social isolation- all ideas are welcome!