ABOUT THE CREATIVE PROCESS:
In this project, I really tried to play around with a variety of styles, shots, and edits. I didn’t want to make something overly straight laced and educational, because that would be both rigid and boring to watch and to create. On the other hand, I couldn’t completely make this a comedy or else the topic itself would lose the spotlight I want to shine on it. Finding a balance was tricky, and it still feels a bit awkward (at least to me), but ultimately it was a lot of fun and sparked a curiosity with filming and editing videos.
The goal of this project was to step away from all the research I was conducting online and take a deeper look at what wildlife conservation looks like near me, and what it means to the people that I know. It’s so easy to say things like “hunters are the most ardent conservationists” when observing from afar or only consuming research that supports one conclusion. I was really interested to see if I might find any differences on the local level. Unlike my previous two projects, I wasn’t attempting to make a statement this time. Previously, I was arguing in support of hunters and trophy hunters as the true force responsible for conservation efforts today, whereas in this project I aimed to give everybody a chance to speak for themselves. The goal wasn’t to argue anything, it was only to learn more.
Again, I think my audience is mainly people around my age who may not have any exposure to hunting aside from demonization. I can recall hearing things like “hunters are evil, there are supermarkets now, but they insist on killing for sport” all the time growing up in a very liberal area. I’m a leftist through and through, and part of my political ideology is the belief that nature is a sacred and valuable resource that should be protected at all costs, so when I found out how massive an impact hunters have on wildlife conservation efforts around the globe, I immediately wanted to know more. I think part of the reason I wanted this project to be a bit humorous is because I wanted a very controversial subject to feel approachable; I think establishing a safe atmosphere is crucial to being able to have difficult ideological conservations, and what’s more disarming than comedy?
The genre I picked to make a video in is documentary, so the video mode I chose to go with borders on being both narrative and informative. My previous work has been modeled argumentatively, so it was nice to change it up and just let individual experiences speak for themselves. I think the choices I made in genre and mode for this project are effective because again, they feel approachable. Humor opens the door to and important and informative conversation, and documentary allows you to just film without having an angle, if that makes sense.
I think my editing worked well in this project. I really enjoyed doing it, which allowed me to spend a lot of time on it without feeling burnt out in the end. Initially, I was worried that I had too many videos, and some of the videos were too long, and I had so much B roll footage because I was worried I wouldn’t have enough, but the time I spent editing allowed me to put together all these random pieces in an effective way. All of the unedited footage together was over 20 minutes in length, and I was able to shave it down to about 9 minutes in length. So in the future, I think the only thing I’d do differently is give a lot more time and attention to my storyboard. I had a pretty solid one, but due to time constraints and schedules not lining up, I wasn’t able to get all the shots I had initially envisioned. I also didn’t think to create a new one because of how many changes I was making from my first idea to the last idea.
Additional Sources that guided this project if you’d like to learn more:
O’Brian, Bill. “Hunters as Conservationists.” FWS.gov, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 11 Apr. 2022, https://www.fws.gov/story/hunters-conservationists.
Rott, Nathan. “Decline in Hunters Threatens How U.S. Pays for Conservation.” NPR, NPR, 20 Mar. 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/03/20/593001800/decline-in-hunters-threatens-how-u-s-pays-for-conservation.
Semcer, Catherine E. “Conservationists Should Support Trophy Hunting.” PERC, The Property and Environment Research Center, 1 Oct. 2019, https://www.perc.org/2019/09/06/conservationists-should-support-trophy-hunting/.
Abumrad, Jad. “The Rhino Hunter.” Radiolab, Simon Adler & Robert Krulwich, WNYC, 27 May 2021, radiolab.org, https://radiolab.org/episodes/rhino-hunter.