Pollinators Documentary Video – Gemma Ahern, 14

I chose to make a video about pollinators in our area. I was passionate about this topic as pollinators other than honey bees are often overlooked, often because many native bees are really small and people don’t stop to look at them. I chose to do a video, as I feel its more engaging than reading something, and videos of animals can give you a more complete image of how they behave. I want people to watch my video and go “wow, pollinators are really cool. I’m going to go plant some native plants to support them!”.

My project consisted of filming lots of videos of pollinators. A lot of them got out of focus with my iPhone camera, some I was too far away, it was a lot of trial and error. I then uploaded the species I didn’t know at first to iNaturalist so I could get other people to confirm that’s what they were. I then did research on these species and wrote the script. After I recorded the voice-over, I added the videos I filmed, and then got further images from online for the things I didn’t or couldn’t record (ex: Monarch butterflies since they don’t come here for another few months) The most enjoyable part of my project was definitely looking for and watching new species of pollinators I had never seen before. The hardest and least enjoyable part was editing everything together.

See Gemma’s video highlighting pollinators’ important role here: