What IF? Video Production Notes

On this last day of National Infertility Awareness Week, I look back over the week and see such tremendous growth. For me personally, I’m looking back on this week as probably one of the turning points in my life. My followers, both of this blog and on Twitter, have substantially increased. My direct traffic has climbed steadily each day. But more importantly, I have met some of the most amazing, brave, passionate people online. I always thought the ALI community was such a small corner of the internet, but I have been proven otherwise this week. I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has spread this out there. I am humbled and deeply grateful.

At the time of writing, my video has reached exactly 5,500 views. Every time it’s embedded in a blog post and played there, or watched directly at the Vimeo link, it records that as a view. I have submitted it to CNN iReport, where, at the time of writing, it has received 208 views. It’s still not yet been vetted by CNN, but whatever, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of all of this was to raise awareness. I didn’t create this video because I’m looking for my 15 minutes of fame or any money. I created this video because I’m simply sick and tired of 7.3 million people not being able to speak out for themselves about a very real and very painful disease, both physically and emotionally.

I wanted to share my production notes about actually making this film. It’s funny- I’ve never made a “film” before. I mean, I’ve shot video, yes, but never put together anything like this before. I just used our camera, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3. For editing, I just used the latest version of iMovie on my husband’s Mac. Our camera was particularly helpful since it shot HD and also had unlimited burst mode, so shooting a series of still frames depicting movement was cake. (Even though it ATE UP the battery fast.)

The original idea was to get a variety of women’s voices reading a bunch of these questions, profiling a day in the life of a woman, as if these were thoughts in her head. I then realized that I didn’t feel like recruiting voiceovers for this, so I thought of just recording myself. Then it morphed into subtitles, and eventually, stop-motion signs. I drew a rough storyboard on Wednesday night. Thursday morning I wrote the script. The entire film was shot over the course of about 10 hours that Saturday. I started bright and early, filming in sequence all of the interior shots in our apartment. Writing all of these questions word by word was… time consuming, at best. I filmed the entire interior sequences in a span of about 4 hours. The most frustrating to film were the shots where the words appeared in the picture frames; I had to shoot, take apart the frame, write the word, reassemble the frame, shoot, lather rinse repeat.

For the exterior work, Larry and I headed to Boston Common. These shots were filmed out of order to make use of available daylight. What I thought was going to be the most challenging sequence: a woman walking across the shot pushing a stroller- was actually quite easy to get. Near the playground, I just walked up to a woman and asked if she wanted to be in my video. She said yes, the rest was history. To thank her for her participation, I gave her a $5 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card. We did two takes, and I used the first take.

While filming, particularly the white board scenes and the chalk on the sidewalk scene, we got a lot of curious looks from passersby, but only one couple actually stopped to ask us what we were doing. Lots of stares, raised eyebrows, and half-smiles.

The music was kind of an accidental find. I was leaning toward a Bach cello suite at first, and then possibly a track from the LOST soundtrack (Rose and Bernard theme, for those of you who are curious). I was just listening to MUSE when I was like, this song is perfect. The lyrics even fit with the theme of the video, another happy accident. If you liked the song, please buy it on  – for only $1.29, it’s a steal 🙂

I had a lot of fun making this. After we finished our shots on the Common, we went out to dinner with some friends for some tasty sushi. After I put the video online, I got a message from one of my friends saying she was amazed I was so perky at dinner afterwards despite filming such a heavy subject all day. The truth is, it was just energizing and motivating. I’ve been riding the energy all week.

I am still absolutely in awe of the reception it has received and is continuing to receive. (15 more views in the 15 minutes I’ve been writing.) I would love for this to get picked up by the media. But more importantly, this experience has got me rethinking about myself, my goals, and perhaps what I’m meant to do in this world. Perhaps health advocacy is my calling, and #ProjectIF was my catalyst.

Speaking of #ProjectIF: you have until 11:59pmEST tonight to submit your entry. Go do it already! 🙂 I’m going to spend this weekend catching up on the 150+ entries so far (uh oh, this is going to feel like ICLW Iron Commenter all over again) this weekend, and I encourage you to do the same.