Click here to view CultuRama trailer

CultuRama is one of the most significant events in school, which brings 300 people together including teachers and students all from different grades in high school together as one to produce two very eventful and memorable shows. Furthermore, CultuRama is a celebration of more than 15 different countries from all over the world through dance. Hence, this year, I took the opportunity with another student to put together a trailer for CultuRama 2018 to be shown on the night itself, highlighting the countless hours of preparation and dedication of the students and teachers. Because we only had a short amount of time to film and edit, we had to put our best foot forward and dedicate our afterschool and lunch-time to compile a 2-minute video to be seen by almost 600 people on the night of CultuRama.

LO 2 CHALLENGE (Undertaken new challenges)/ NEW SKILLS (Developing new skills):

Videography, is something entirely new to me, even though I had a bit of experience from before, in which I had to create videos for class work, but something to be presented to more than 600 people was definitely a new experience to me. It was quite challenging and overwhelming at first, because my partner and I had to find alternative methods other than using our phones, as this video is being used on a big scale. So we spent quite a lot of time going around school to the communications office, IT department and the facilities department. Until we finally found a camera that the activities department were willing to lend us for Culturama.
Moreover, the fact that we only had 2 weeks to interview, record and edit the footage was probably the biggest challenge we faced. To be able to give a glimpse of all the dances to be seen on the night was very hard, as we could not keep the video longer than two minutes. So we had to be risk takers and experiment new features that would allow us to cut down the video length. Also, we had to completely remove almost 80% of the recordings we got the week before it was due, as it was not fitting in and looking quite lousy. But we were persistent and had a ‘never give up’ attitude, which allowed us to finish the video on time. This is something essential to have in life because there will always be obstacles you face, but what counts is how you get past them and overcome each challenge one step at a time.

LO3 INITIATIVE (Planning and initiated activities):

Although the communications department does a yearly highlight of the CultuRama show; Featuring a trailer before the show would be completely new and unique. My partner and I came up with the idea because we felt that CultuRama is the biggest and most eventful show in our school, so to come up and present a trailer on the night would surely have been something so unique. One challenging part to coming up with this idea is that we had to talk to several stakeholders of the CultuRama committee first and listen to their ideas and to implement each idea into the video. We had to be very open-minded looking to what all needed to be put into the video so that it makes a perfect and professional end product.

LO 5 COLLABORATION (Working together to achieve an outcome):

Effective collaboration was the most significant part of this CultuRama process, as I had to work with not only my partner but various people in the committee and also the dance leaders. However, working with my partner was also a bit challenging, as we had separate ideas on the video, but ultimately after discussing with one another we came to a standpoint in the middle, which would feature some parts that he wants to be implemented and some parts that I wanted to implement, overall producing a professional-like video. Also, organizing and planning with dance leaders of when we could come and film their respective nation’s dance was overwhelming, because they too only had a month to come up with a dance and perform, so we did not want to take up too much time of their time with the interviews and recording. But, through our effective collaboration with other critical stakeholders in CultuRama, we were able to overcome the problems we faced.