About This Project
Over the summer of 2021, I was hired by the Vancouver Chinese Film Festival committee to assist in production for the online version of their film festival in adaption to the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a daunting task for everyone involved because this was the first proper attempt at organizing the entire event to be online. I was brought on to a team with 2 employees who had previously worked on last years project as well as 2 other newcomers who were also hired for video editing and effects. My largest contributions to this project were designing and creating the stage backdrops for the opening and awards ceremonies while also doing other work such as filming, transcribing, rendering, and editing. Production began on June 1st and ended on August 12th.
Iterations of the opening ceremony background
Work began in the conceptualization phase. Using the previous years ceremonies as a template, our team of five put together a list of elements that would be needed for the final showing that needed to be created within the span of two months. I was tasked with creating virtual stages for the MCs and green screen them onto said stages at the end of production. Aside from that I also cooperated with other team members to establish a consistent aesthetic for each ceremony as well as the general festival.
The process of the opening background details a fairly good representation of what the general design philosophy my boss expected from us while under her employ. Often we would be asked to draft ideas for specific elements of the video and then come to her with our prototypes. She would then approve our design and instruct us to "make it fancier" and "give it more detail", which I eventually figured out meant I needed to continue adding more effects and complex animations and see what stuck. Honestly, this job gave me a better idea of what working freelance was like despite the fact that I was a proper employee of the company. I used Adobe After Effects to create these scenes while also using Photoshop to design external elements like the animated city skyline to import into it later.
I worked on and off on the stages and backgrounds and helped out in other areas as often as I could. One of my coworkers needed help putting together the award graphics so I was able to lend her a hand to ensure that we would be able to stay ahead of schedule. I also volunteered to transcribe English subtitles over the masterclass portion of the festival when I knew that others were too busy with their own tasks to add it to their workload at the moment. I figured out quickly that in a team setting like this, being flexible and able to help out other employees whenever you could was key to staying on schedule as well as building a good relationship with those around you.
