Clients: The University of Waterloo Centre for Co-operative and Experiential Education, Shopify, Arup Canada Inc., Splunk, Curvegrid Inc., The Centre for Applied Genomics, Avani Bio Energy
Goal: To create a series of videos that would highlight the relationship between the University of Waterloo and the winners of the awards
Skills Applied: Premiere Video Editing, Video Scripting, Conceptualizing, Paper Editing, Interviewing and Preparation, Project Management
Results: Videos were shown at the Impact Awards Ceremony and posted on various social media channels by the University of Waterloo
The Concept
The Employer Impact Award Videos were a project I completed during my time with the University of Waterloo's Centre for Co-operative and Experiential Education. Each year, the Employer Impact Awards recognize six co-op employers of Waterloo students that made a difference that year. As part of their prizing, each employer receives a video highlighting their partnership with the University of Waterloo. 
For the first ever Impact Awards, the creation of these videos was my responsibility. I was in charge of conceptualizing, scripting, planning, shooting, and editing the videos completely independently. I produced twelve videos, two for each of the six employers, and all of them were published on various University of Waterloo social media channels, as well as being shared by the employers themselves. Students and employers alike now look at these videos to show them the best aspects of Waterloo's co-op program.
The Story of the Videos
I was hired at CEE specifically for the project of the Impact Award Videos. The Impact Awards were a new initiative under Employer Engagement and Recognition with the intention of highlighting the employers that made a difference in the last year. The videos were an important component of this, since they would represent the partnership between the winners and the university to many different types of viewers. The winners would see these videos as advertisement for them, showing everyone how well they were integrated into the world of education, other employers would see them as motivation to employ more Waterloo students and provide them with extraordinary experiences, and students would see them as representations of the great experiences one can have in a co-op program, perhaps even motivating them to join co-op or apply to Waterloo. 
This pitch was given to me when I started at CEE. From that point on, everything was up to me. The first step was coming up with a series of proposals for what the videos could look like, the style and feel they could have, and what the main message for each would be. Additionally, I had to figure out how these videos could be made remotely, as this was during the lockdown in the summer of 2020. I drafted and presented a series of proposals for the videos, and it was decided that the videos would be made by gathering interview footage of employers and students, and overlaying it with B-roll footage that the winners would provide to us.
Gathering Footage and Shaping the Story
Once the award winners were decided, I reached out to each of them, asking for interviews with their representatives and co-op students, as well as any B-roll footage they could provide to us for the purpose of the videos. I went on to create an outline for where I wanted each video to go, and with this outline in mind, I wrote a set of questions for each of the interviews. I then reached out to the winners and asked to schedule remote interviews with representatives and co-op students, as well as any B-roll I could use. I planned and scheduled all of the interviews, and collected my footage for the video this way. I also collected and sorted through all the B-roll footage given to me by the winners.  During this time, I was the winners' main point of contact at the University of Waterloo, and most of them had questions about the plan of the videos that I would discuss with them. This was a completely new experience for me and taught me a lot about professional communications, since it was part of my job to represent the University to these external partners.
After gathering all the interview and B-roll footage, I had to make a paper edit for each video so that they could be approved by the rest of the team at CEE. Paper editing is something I have never done before, but I quickly learned how much value it brings to an extensive project like this. In most cases, the interviews lasted for over half an hour, meaning I had to condense about an hour and a half of collective interview footage and four text cards into a two minute video. While creating these paper edits, I spent a lot of time going through all of the interviews and finding the phrases said by the interviewees that would give me the best, most cohesive story when pieced together. During this process is when the story and identity of each video really became clear, and, wary of falling into the trap of boring corporate videos, I tried to give each of the winners as unique and distinctive an identity as possible. 
Creating and Showcasing the Videos
When the paper edits were finished and approved, it was time to do the task I am most comfortable with: The editing. Up to this point, many of the things I was doing for this project were new skills to me, at least in a professional setting. But my skills in editing were the reason I was hired for this job, and they are something I can always count on. I created a concept draft video for one of the winners, to demonstrate the direction these videos were going to take to all the stakeholders internal to the University. I then solicited feedback on this concept draft from my direct superiors, the Employer Engagement Team, the Marketing Team, and the leaders of CEE themselves to create the final version of how these videos would be portrayed. Throughout this process, I received constant feedback from all these people on possible alterations I could make to the video, and the story and direction of these awards was changed many times, due to the nature of it being the first time they were being given out. I ended up creating seven versions of the first video until everyone agreed that this was the version of the story that we as the university wanted to tell. After creating this concept draft, I edited all of the other videos after the same style, and had to make only very minor adjustments to them based on feedback because of how well I had defined the story with my concept draft. Prior to publishing, the videos were then went to the winners for review, and every one of them was very impressed with how their video had turned out, again suggesting only minor edits, if any. Due to long waiting times for the employers as well as CEE staff to respond with resources and feedback, all of these videos were created on a very tight schedule, but I like to think that I managed this schedule very well and created a product that fulfilled everyone's expectations.
My Takeaways
This project was the first time that I was completely in charge of a video project from the conceptualization stage all the way until the end in a professional setting. I led every stage of the process, and had a lot of creative freedom. However, I also had a lot to learn about performing within the expectations of multiple stakeholders. This is something I have had experience with previously, but working in the middle of a partnership between two large companies gave it a new sense of scale in my mind. Everyone has their own view of what the video will look like, and all of them look different. It is my job to unite all these different views, and create a product that will satisfy everyone. I believe that through the system I adopted when I worked on this project, I was able to do this very well. It is difficult to take someone else's vision that they have in their mind and put it on a screen in front of them, but with my skills in adapting my work to outside feedback and intuiting the visions of those I work with, I was able to do this. Additionally to this, I learned many other skills throughout this project, such as navigating the managing and planning stage of a video project, facilitating external communications, arranging and preparing for interviews, and creating paper edits. I consider this to be the most valuable learning experience of my career. This project is where I believe I went from being someone that is good at creating videos to being a professional video creator.

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