I first met Laurence Segal while at my retail job at Destiny USA, a nearby mall. He was dressed head to toe in breast cancer related clothing and was eager to talk about his efforts in raising money for breast cancer research when I brought up the topic. It was clear to me from the moment we met that he was passionate about finding a cure, and has made raising awareness and funds a priority in his life. After speaking further with him, I found out that he makes daily rounds around the mall collecting bottles and cans from the recyclable bins on each floor and placing them into his own pink bins. I knew then that I wanted to capture his journey in 360 video.
When mapping out my plan for the video, I wanted to emphasize Segal's efforts as turning his passion into a positive local effort of community service. All of the money Segal has raised since the start of his journey has been donated to the Carol M. Baldwin Breast Cancer Research Fund of Central New York. By the end of this year, Segal will have collected over 2 million bottles and raised around $100,000.
I knew that the story would follow Segal from collecting bottles around Destiny to turning them in at Bottle's End for 6 cents a piece. I considered also reaching out to the Carol M. Baldwin fund for sound bytes, but decided that Segal was well-versed in telling his own story and liked creating it entirely from his perspective. In this video, the viewer is present while talking to Segal and going on the bottle collection journey with him.
During post-production, I spent some time deciding whether or not I would insert a Nadir patch into my video. I ultimately decided against it because I find the patch to be more distracting when looking down than I do the stitched view of the tripod. I also referred to the NYT VR app and realized that not many of their videos use the Nadir patch either; thus cementing my decision. Ideally, I would love for this video to be of similar caliber to those found on the NYT VR app. I had some trouble editing the audio clips to all sound the same as I'm not familiar with video editing software, but I am pleased with my final result.
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