I was hired to create a series of videos that celebrates the 75th anniversary of the West Multnomah Soil & Water Conservation District located in the Portland, Oregon area.
The main video discusses the District's Formation and History, as well as the mission, partners and projects that the District has been involved with over the years. Other videos focused on various projects and the District's work.
About the project
Originally the main video was planned to be 20 -30 minutes long. The project took two years to produce. It featured nearly a dozen interviews with past and present Board members, Directors and staff.
The project made full use of my skills as a documentarian researcher. I had to dive into into historical records found at local libraries and country historical societies, old articles from local newspapers, research at the Portland City archive for photos of long gone buildings, plus a search with the State conservation agency for records of the district's formation. The District greatly appreciated having someone who could gather together a cohesive narrative on their organization.
It's funny how organizations in their never-ending quest to accomplish projects, find partners and funding, that their own history gets lost in the whir of activity. Thankfully that's where I come in.
As I stated the original film was slated to be 20 or more minutes long. But thanks to working close with the District's Communications Director and very judicial editing, we got the film down to a nice seven minutes.
The Other Videos
The other aspect of this project was documenting various projects and work that the District has done over the years in regards to soil & water conservation, farming, invasive species abatement and various other important work.
These videos all involved various field trips to sites during all kinds of situations where the lighting and weathers condition for filming would change every minute because ...well, ...that's Portland and the Pacific Northwest.
I'll let these films speak for themselves in terms of the topics covered.
Technical Notes:
This was all shot with a crew of one (me) using a Panasonic GH4 with either Panasonic or Olympus lenses. Certain location scenes were GoPro Camera shots. The DJI drone footage was provided by Brian Thomson and Scott Gall.
Audio was recorded on a Zoom F1-LP and Zoom H4. Recordings done on Sauvie Island locations were constantly getting interrupted by planes flying overhead as they were leaving Portland International Airport. Thankfully I was working with very patient interview subjects.
Overall, despite the challenges, this was a great project to work on for a great client.