My creative process is pretty straightforward in terms of whether or not a follow a step by step process. I don’t, which is why most of the time, with any project, essay, or assignment that I do, I improvise a lot.
This project wasn’t any different. I went into it with a plan. I had a pretty good idea about what I wanted to do, where I was going to go, and how I was going to go about doing it. Because of a variety of reasons, time being one of them, I ended up going a pretty different route from what I originally intended. You’ll (I’m assuming that only you, Mrs. Skilliter will be reading this) notice that my planning sheets do not correspond with my actual project. Sorry about that.
It was always in my plans, however, to make a video showing some of the instances in Rookie Blue where I have particularly enjoyed the story telling, and thought that the writing and direction was good. I didn’t know going into it how long it would end up being, so I apologize for making you watch an 11 minute long video (and then a 12 minute long one… But we’ll get to that later). Honestly, the video probably would have been an hour long had I put everything I wanted to in it, but that would be a cruel thing for me to do to you. My process in making this video was a little bit different than when I’ve made other edits. This time, I wasn’t trying to make a really visually appealing video, but rather to just fit in all of the scenes in a sequence that kind of made sense. For that video, really all I did was go through the episodes of Rookie Blue that I have downloaded on my computer (I have all of them), chose the scenes I liked, and dragged them into the area where I then started to edit. Most of the scenes ended up having to go in the end. Editing wise, all I did was change some colouring and add basic transitions. In the background are three consecutive songs by Hey Rosetta! – Psalm, which I heard on Flashpoint (another great Canadian show), We Made a Pact, which I also heard on Flashpoint, and Red Song which was featured in an episode of Rookie Blue. I hope you at least somewhat enjoy watching it, and if not, maybe don’t find it too painful to have to sit through (it is long, after all).
The next thing I did was basically write play by plays for two episodes of television shows. Episode 3×10 of Rookie Blue, and episode 5×12 of Flashpoint. My purpose in doing this was to give you an idea about the quality of television that one may expect with Canadian television. I personally love both Flashpoint and Rookie Blue, they are two of my favourite television shows, so it’s a realbonus to me that they are both Canadian. In these play by plays I tried to write as many quotes from the episode as I could in order to demonstrate some of the talent in Canadian screen writers.
Thirdly, I made a quick blog post that lists some of the Canadian songs that I’ve heard and loved on Canadian television, all of which are from Rookie Blue save for two which were on Flashpoint (Psalm and We Made a Pact by Hey Rosetta). I did this so that if you were interested in discovering some new Canadian artists and songs, this may give you an easy way of getting started with that.
The last thing I did for this project was to throw together a series of scenes in Rookie Blue where I thought that the music choice was particularly well done, and when I think the music really adds to the scene. All of the musical choices I chose to showcase in this video are Canadian, though there are a number of scenes I would have loved to include that feature American artists. Again, I apologize for the length of the video. Who knows, you may find it interesting enough to stick around and watch. I didn’t actually do any editing in this video except for some basic transitions and the adding of the song titles into the clips, as editing was not the point for that video.
My inspiration to do this project on Canadian television and the Canadian music that plays on it, was quite simply my love for both, and the fact that so often they are interconnected.
Canadian TV & Music 