Glas-Go Green for COP26

Glasgow brought in a world-wide audience this September with the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, where people all across the world attending venues in Glasgow, Scotland to combat the current climate crisis we live in. As part of this global event, I, along with a group of fellow music industry workers, including Colin Murphy, Andrew McNeil, Luke McRitchie, and Nicole Heaney, created a small project called Glas-Go Green, a pledge to encourage the citizens of Glasgow to increase their awareness of climate change and to help curb the drastic changes we are currently seeing across the planet from climate change's impact.

The Glas-Go Green project was to be presented at Film City in Govan, Glasgow, alongside other works from creative industry practitioners across Glasgow and Scotland who likewise sought to spread a message of change regarding the world's various government's stances on climate change and their lacklustre approach to tackling it. Comprising of an informational video hosted on a small website highlighting the message, we got to work on the Glas-Go Green project for a presentation date of 21st October 2021 at Film City.

The initial project ideas were vastly different to what the end result was; originally we had planned ideas such as a video using footage of various politicians lying about their stance on climate change, however this was scrapped due to the hefty prices of sample clearances for access to some of these clips. Another idea was for Luke to compose and recite poetry related to a climate change message over footage of the various effects that climate change has had around Scotland, however this was scrapped due to it taking too long for Luke to compose such material.

Ultimately we settled on an information video highlighting the causes of climate change in Scotland, specifically Glasgow and the surrounding areas, the effects it has caused and will cause on areas in Glasgow, and what measures we as the public can take to mitigate climate change's effects and one day reverse it entirely.

Settling which roles people would take on the task proved to be incredibly difficult for a variety of reasons; Colin who was in our group ultimately had to leave due to the unfortunate circumstances of his brother passing away, likewise with Nicole whose grandmother passed away shortly before the project was finished. She ultimately stuck on to help with the promotional front of the project after the main bulk had finished.

This left Adam, Luke, and myself to cover the remaining portions of the project; Luke was tasked with contacting the Climate Change Fund for Scotland for permission to use information feature in a document highlighting the effects climate change has had across Scotland including waste disposal, unwanted goods, energy over-usage, and a variety of other details. Luke was also tasked with interviewing a spokesperson from the Climate Change Fund in order to get more information not included in the document.

Adam was tasked with capturing video and audio footage to use in the video, while I handled additional aspects of video and audio capturing and took control of the website design, video editing, musical composition, mixing, and collating. In hindsight this wasn't a wise move, however due to the severe constraints put upon us and the fact that Adam and I had no information to work with for almost 2 weeks (with the presentation date being set for a week's time), we were forced to rush and create everything as quickly as we could before the date came.

Luke sent audio of a narration he performed covering the details of the document and also told us we had clearance to use any information, images, or footage from the Climate Change Fund's website. This led to us eventually getting to work on the video which I spent approximately 3 days crunching out to ensure it was of a high enough quality despite the timeframe and the scheduling while other projects were underway at the time.

I used Adobe Premiere Pro 2020 to edit the video and Ableton Live 10 to process Luke's narration; the audio editing stage for my composition and Luke's narration was fairly simple; Luke's narration did require a bit more work as I was aiming for the video to be approximately 2:30 to 3 minutes in length. This meant shortening gaps between sentences, clearing up some mistakes Luke had made, applying compression to slightly lift the narration in volume, adding more presence, and applying EQ to make his voice smoother and more captivating.

The music had a similar process; I wanted to compose a piece that reflected elements of purity, peace, harmony, but also some sense of unease, as if there was a sense of worry or upset to this natural theme. I took inspiration from artists such as Aphex Twin and Talk Talk for a blend of ambient music, soft bossa nova, and post-rock, leading to a piece featuring bass, light drums, kalimba/marimba, piano, and some aesthetics in the forms of rivers flowing, birds tweeting, and gentle chimes. I also wanted the piece to be peaceful and rather simple (save for the kalimba solo before the outro) in order for Luke's vocals (narration) to have enough room to remain audible for the audience to hear the message of the video.

The video itself took the longest to work on due to the time spent planning how the video would pan out, finding which footage matched with the information heard in the narration, and ensuring everything had a constantly smooth flow, not being frenetic or jerky, but mellow and informative, somewhat like an advert but not peddling a product and more independently made.

Footage included scenery of Loch Lomond and the Trossachs, shots from around the Govan Docks, Argyle Street and Buchanan Street in Glasgow City Centre, and various free-to-use stock footage pieces (all pieces of stock footage used were licenced free to use for all uses); stock footage was used primarily for 2 reasons; we had very little time to gain access to various places that Adam and I thought would make for great shots in the video (a recycling plant, for instance), and we also could not get to some of these locations, due to scheduling issues and the short timeframe. It also allowed the video to feel more general in its output, in that the footage Adam and I captured and the stock footage we compiled felt universal; there was no brand imagery or massively obvious name, save for the Glas-Go Green project name, the name of all the project contributors, and credit being given to Climate Change Fund for Scotland.

The video came in at approximately 3:20, a decent video length for the information necessary and to keep people's attention on what the Glas-Go Green project was about. The website came shortly after and this is where I feel we fell the weakest; as I tasked myself on making the website and at this point we had only 1 day left before the presentation date, I ultimately created a very small, short website featuring the video and a brief run-down of what the project entailed and what the video covered.

Compared to my own website and other website's I had seen other people make for similar projects, I felt like it was incredibly rushed and it severely impacted our project's look. The video, in my opinion, turned out great, save for a few additional elements I would have liked to added, including footage from Scottish and UK governmental speeches or discussions around environmental issues to further cement the message we wished to portray, however due to scheduling and timeframe issues, the Glas-Go Green project felt slightly flat.

In hindsight, this was due to poor task-handling on my part, poor task distrubtion, and external forces that were outwith our control. This, however, will not stop me from working on more projects like this in the future; climate change is a seriously hot topic that I take an active interest in, and the informational work my colleagues and I did felt very inspiring, especially making me want to work on more projects similar to it.