“Health Justice Scholarship is Personal”

When I first learned about our Final Project assignment, I knew that I wanted to create a video that was related to my work as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. My intention for enrolling in this course was centered around wanting to tell a story (in the case of my research) in a very digestible way versus having to write a scientific paper or present at a conference. I appreciated learning from Dan and Ian about the elements of a story and using the camera effectively in both photography and cinematography. Overall, this course helped me build a foundation of skills to create digital content with an intentional narrative.

For the Final Project, the video that I proposed was to create a short essay roughly 5-7 minutes, that highlighted some of the work being done at the Racial Justice Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. I recruited two of my dear colleagues, Dr. Brittney Francis and Dr. Marie Plaisime who are featured in the final project video. The purpose of the video was to showcase why “health justice scholarship is personal.”

The main content of the video was to incorporate cuts recorded in an interview style. I wanted the video to be dynamic and therefore include cuts that were recorded from different angles or in different locations such as inside the offices or outside. While I wanted to feature my colleagues separately sharing their stories, I thought it was important to also capture a cut with both of them together. I felt that I wanted the overall message to be that while the research and scholarship can be personal, it is also collective work, especially in the field of public health.

To plan for the Final Project, we were tasked to submit a proposal as well as a five-week timeline of pre- and post-production with checkpoints of progress report submissions. In Week 1 of pre-production, I met with my colleagues to pitch them the idea and worked on scheduling a time to film. Week 2 focused on creating the storyboard and shot list and getting started on filming. Weeks 3 and 4 focused on filming and beginning post-production, putting together the video which did not happen. Scheduling challenges and work priorities pushed recording content with my colleagues into Week 5. The last couple of days were spent in postproduction finalizing and packaging the Final Project for submission.

One of my biggest challenges in the process of this Final Project was scheduling with my colleagues to film content as mentioned. While I did not follow my original timeline of production, I took the opportunity to work around our busy schedules in between meetings and classes to film. We were able to do the bulk of the filming in this last week which tightened up post-production time. Because of the scheduling, I had to resort to capturing and using B-rolls instead of having some of the interviews done outside or at different locations as I originally intended.

Recording video for this project was a continuous exercise of learning how to use the camera and applying technical skills we learned such as composition and exposure as well as sound recording. Incorporating the use of additional equipment like a lavalier microphone and lighting was also part of the production exercise. I did run into some technical issues in postproduction. One of my main video files did not copy over and I had lost a principle recording. The cuts included in the final version of the video (which are very obvious) were from secondary cameras. The video cuts and audio were compromised. The editing process was more intuitive than challenging because we had experience with it for our other assignments. A few things that I overlooked in production were shooting in a uniform orientation (landscape vs portrait) and also considering the framerates. In post, I had to crop a few video cuts. Also, while I intended to apply a dramatic effect using slow motion, some of the videos ended up being very choppy.

Overall, I believe I was able to create the video that I intended for this Final Project. The final video is a little over 15 minutes which was longer than what I had planned (5-7 minutes). During production, I asked my colleagues a few broad questions to guide the flow of the intended narrative. Ultimately, this was their story and I did my best to curate the message with what they shared. I hope that this video evokes curiosity and inspiration in the work that my colleagues (and I do), studying the intersections of racism and health at Harvard T.H. Chan.

This was a fun project and course. I hope I am able to make more media content like this with refined skills in the fundamentals of digital photography and cinematography.

A special mahalo nui (thank you) to Dan and Ian for a great course this semester.

-JRCS