This article is part of the Undisrupted series, a series of articles detailing our troop's response to the current COVID-19 situation, allowing training to continue even when physical CCA sessions have been postponed showing that our troop is truly prepared and unwavered even in the face of the pandemic.
By Seah Zhang Qi, SPL and Ryan Loh, ASPL
For this year’s NDP celebration, the Sec 3 excos were tasked with making two videos that celebrate national day and represent all that we wanted to tell to others during this time of Covid-19, to be played during the national anthem and pledge taking respectively. Video production was nothing new to us, as we had experience producing a video for CHS Open House. During the video brainstorming and ideation, many people were involved, who contributed video scene ideas, theme suggestions, etc. Yu Hern oversaw the filming and editing of the pledge video, and Shu Heng oversaw the editing of the anthem video. Zhang Qi and I oversaw the entire project, helping with the editing process and organising manpower.
Aligning our theme of the video with this year’s NDP theme, we wanted to showcase scenes of Singapore under safe distancing guidelines, and how everyday life has changed but still continued. However, we faced many challenges and issues, with most of them attributing to the ongoing covid-19 situations and the restraints placed because of this situation. We had to keep in small groups while recording which severely limited what we were able to do which narrowed down our options by a large amount.
Initially, we were faced with the problem of filming, as poor weather conditions and safe distancing guidelines made it hard to go out. However, we managed to improvise, filming safely from a distance, in a car. Having to juggle our school commitments and this video project was also a challenge we faced, as many of those involved were Secondary 3 students taking their Termly Assessments soon. However, we continued to put in the effort for this video, making time for filming and editing without sacrificing on our studies. From this, I learnt that while time may be finite, there will always be enough time. Prioritisation was key in this project, where we prioritised scenes that could be filmed earlier so that the editing process could be sped up.
My main takeaway is to always strive for excellence. Throughout the editing process, there were always improvements made. As minor as some of these improvements may be, we should still put in our best effort, and produce our best work. This is what it means to be a Catholic High Scout.
Additionally, we also decided to go for a video where we got many other scouts to help out with the filming and being part of the video by singing the national anthem and saying the pledge. However, this also proved to be challenging as the filming groups had to be confined within their own class and they could only work with scouts from the same class. This meant that filming would also be handled by the scouts of that class. Therefore, what we imagined the video being like was completely different from what was produced. Therefore, we scrapped that idea and moved on to the next. This process of trying ideas and scrapping them continued for a while due to the many issues that we faced because of the guidelines that we had to follow. In the end, we persevered, and after countless ideas, we decided on showing and representing the daily life of Singaporean citizens despite the covid-19 situation. This was meant to show the perseverance of Singaporeans not giving up even in the face of hardships and challenges. We recorded clips mostly through drive-bys where the camera would be in the car recording scenes of the daily life of Singaporeans. This way, we were able to produce a good video celebrating Singapore’s birthday with meaning while still fulfilling the covid-19 guidelines.
This experience was the first time that I had to work with others to scrap and record so many different ideas. Through this experience I really learnt the value of not giving up and persevering towards the end as if you do not give up, you will definitely keep getting closer to your goal.
In sum, this small contribution to our community has enabled us to learn so much more about ourselves and allowed us to be moulded, and shaped into better scouts. Scouts with purpose, drive, perseverance, and excellence.
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