Online portfolio for Vandna Sidher

VANDNA SIDHER

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Portfolio

multimedia designer & communications strategistvsidher_gmail.com 778-709-1986 vandnasidher.com HOME No Frame

Since graduating from Simon Fraser University with a degree in Communications and a minor in Publishing, I have worked in public and private sectors within communications, publishing and public relations. As a result I have gained experience working on strategic communication, organizational branding strategies; designing and executing media relations campaigns.

As an effective leader and communicator I enjoy collaborating with multi-disciplinarian teams. As a classically trained dance artist and teacher, from a young age, I have been fascinated with Vancouver's contemporary connections to the diverse and multicultural history, art, and culture of our global citizens.

As a graduate student at the Centre for Digital Media, for my internship, I am currently working as a multimedia designer and communications strategist in Ottawa, Ontario.

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Momento Mori Trailer

PROJECT: Momento Mori (Visual Story, Project 1) Six inter-related short films (photography based).SYNOPSIS: Time is immortal. These six short films are inspired by the fragility of time. The notion of time and space is a commonality between characters featured in Momento Mori. Our central character lives in a calm and centered state, he experiences clarity whereas others are in a constant state of conflict and chaos.Common thread between characters: the senses (each character represents a sense; except for protagonist, as he embodies all six senses). MY ROLE: Director/Creative Director, WriterCOLLABORATORS: Christine Clark, Jennifer Sun, Robin Pan and Nouf Alkenani.WHAT I LEARNED: We had four weeks to complete this narrative-driven collaborative venture. I learned the importance of scoping (being realistic about a deliverable while keeping in mind various constraints, which in this case was working in a limited time frame and a short production cycle). This was my first time directing actors for a film shoot. With a communications and dance background I had done creative direction before, however, not in this context. It was a great experience going out of my comfort zone in terms of directing yet also being able to write, something I enjoy immensely. It was challenging for us to shoot the entire project in one day, and filming in public spaces was a bit challenging but these locations were integral to the story.

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MY ROLE: Publicist and Publications Coordinator, Ballet British ColumbiaIn this position I developed strategy, designed and managed publicity campaigns and company publications. Interacting with various media, as spokesperson for provincial and national TV, radio and print; developed media briefs and wrote news releases and articles.COLLABORATORS: colleauges; media (TV, radio and print) including CBC, The Georgia Straight, Shaw TV, CTV, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, among others.CHALLENGE: For the world premiere of The Four Seasons, my main challenge as company publicist, was how can we present this ballet in an engaging way to the audience to create excitement about this production? The Four Seasons included many components and artists: the presence of local painter Tiko Kerr, who completed a work on a glass pane on stage during the performance, and a drawing machine by installation artist Alan Storey, which tracked the movements of a lead dancer in real-time during the ballets prelude and postlude. The production featured original music by local composer Michael Bushnell and the participation of young dancers from Arts Umbrella (featured during the first movement of Antonio Vivaldi's Fall concerto). The solution was to create a short video (preview of the production to be featured on the company website) - this included interviews with key artists and behind the scenes footage leading up to the run of the show. I was involved with selecting content for the video (music, artists to be interviewed, etc), interviewing artists and coordinating other production details.

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Page 1 PROJECT: It's Your City (Building Virtual Worlds Project) Our team wanted to create a prototype/proof of concept (website) for newcomers and tourists in Metro Vancouver; enabling them to share their commuting stories and receive first-hand information from other users. OBJECTIVE: To create an interactive website that is informative, easy to use and engaging.X-Statement: Everyone has a story and every story has a setting.MY ROLE: Project Manager, Director/Creative Director, WriterCOLLABORATORS: Hayat Khan, David Klassen, Basmah Almohammadi, and Haneen Mandurah.WHAT I LEARNED: A major challenge I faced was trying to bridge the communication between technical and artistic team members. Our team had some indirect and reserved communicators - which at times was challenging. However this also forced creative solutions to be sought. This often resulted in self-reflection; basically asking myself: How may I rephrase this? Or perhaps drawing something rather than writing a process down.I also learned the importance of rapid prototyping (using agile methodologies); and the value of having a balance between being able to delegate yet also having everyone on board as equal and positive contributors in this educational environment. We wanted to do an etiquette film (poking fun at some of the situations we often find ourselves in while taking public transit). So we filmed on board a skytrain on an early Saturday morning. We were successful in obtaining enough footage, however we experienced various technical challenges: our main camera in the beginning of the shoot suddenly stopped working, another battery died and so we resorted to filming using one of our class-mates iphone! This definitely was a teachable moment in being prepared as much as possible (having back-up equippment but also being able to make decisions 'on the fly').

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Page 3 PROJECT: It's Your City (Building Virtual Worlds Project) A prototype (website) for newcomers and tourists to Vancouver; enabling them to share their commuting stories and receive first-hand information from other users. OBJECTIVE: Create an interactive prototype that is informative, easy to use and engaging.X-Statement: Everyone has a story and every story has a setting.MY ROLE: Project Manager, Creative Director, WriterCOLLABORATORS: Basmah Almohamadi, Hayat Khan, Haneen Mandurah, David Klassen, and David Kim. WHAT I LEARNED: I learned the importance of rapid iteration (having a discovery phase and creating prototypes), and various scheduling related tasks in the production pipeline (for example looking at dependencies) on a three month-project. Throughout this work I found that a balance between being able to delegate yet also having everyone on board as equal and positive contributors is vital to the success of any project and particularly to the morale of a team.

WEBSITE INTRODUCTORY VIDEO (top right) ETIQUETTE VIDEO (bottom right)

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Introductory sequence of interactive narrative
PROJECT: Dance is A Poem (Visual Story, Project II) An interactive narrative about choices in one's life; the dance of life interwoven with poetry; art imitating life/life imitating art; dealing with notions of time, and the human spirit. Interactive actions/decisions are reflective of our protagonist. Art created thematically represents the protagonist's life and is a transition in itself. MY ROLE: Director/Creative Director, WriterCOLLABORATORS: Hayat Khan, David Klassen, Nouf Alkenani, and Daniel Lu.WHAT I LEARNED: I found it challenging trying to write a story or concept in such a short time frame. It had been awhile since I had worked on a creative storytelling project, and trying to figure out a storyline/concept in a timely fashion so that the rest of the team could begin working on their tasks for the project was also a bit daunting. In our collaborative-based environment, I wanted to ensure that our entire team had at least some creative input, not just one person telling the team what the project would be about. So the long brainstorming sessions and exhausting discussions actually worked! Because we had only three weeks to complete this project, all of us worked on many aspects of the film. I enjoyed the variety of tasks I was involved in which included: writing the story (concept), contacting and arranging actors and props for our shoot, organizing shoot details, working with the actors (directing), creative direction (working with our UI designer, art director and director of photography on shot by shot sequencing and flow; and our technical team regarding interactive entry points); and selecting music for our interactive film.

Link to Dance Is A Poem

sandbox

Pixel Dreams
PROJECT: Pixel Dreams (Industry Project I) Interactive art installation COLLABORATORS: Lucas Huang, Christine Clark, Leto Yang and Matthew Marshall.Our team, Sandbox Lab, created an interactive art installation for the official ground-breaking event of the new Great Northern Way Campus. Our campus has a rather unusual story (certainly transformative in nature; tire factory to digital media campus). There were two components to the art installation (kinect cubes accompanied by game space sounds) and visual ambient narrative along with a soundscape. The cubes reflect our child-like wonder with the endless possibilities of technology. Upon entering this space, vines intuitively retract; one can fly with a flock of owls, choreograph a series of fireworks in the backdrop of Vancouver's city harbour, and set off solar flares. With the ambient content, our theme is notstalgia (past/present/future) as a randomness is created from the imagery and sounds. The ambient narrative visually and auditorily explores the unique project work that students produce at CDM along with MDM culture. Random conversations, almost like staccato notes, are juxtaposed along with sounds reflective of our concept, such as: wind chimes, distant laughter, a trainyard, rain, etc (ambient textures). As a 'mixed tape' idea, organic, random and non-rehearsed 'fly on the wall' type of conversations fill the space - as though an outsider is getting to listen in. MY ROLE: sound designer, researcher, creative director, and assistant project manager.

ambient narrative soundscape (sample)

pixeldreams_audio_portfolio_edit.mp3

Portfolio

Education

Jan '11 - Current

Centre for Digital Media (Great Northern Way Campus: British Columbia Institute of Technology, Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia, and Emily Carr University of Art + Design) Graduate candidate (December 2012)

Masters of Digital Media

Sept '99 - Aug '05

Simon Fraser University B.A. (Communication major, Publishing minor) with Co-operative Education Certificate

Communication Skills

Strong written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills.

Knowledge of agile methodologies in project management; rapid prototyping

and reiteration.

Effective facilitator; creative problem-solver; passion for learning.

Experience making public presentations, media relations; working in multi-disciplinarian teams as a leader

and collaborator.

Graduate Internship

Sept - Dec '11

Communications Security Establishment

of Canada (Ottawa, Ontario)

Multimedia designer &

communications strategist

Centre for Digital Media (Industry Project)

May - August 2011

Sandbox Lab's Pixel Dreams (commissioned art installation) for the ground-breaking ceremony of new Great Northern Way Campus

Vandna_Sidher_resume.pdf

Technical Skills

Experience working in both MAC and

PC platforms.

Knowledge of MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Photoshop and Soundbooth.

Experience working with computer-based and web-based technologies relating to design, production and distribution.

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Vandna Sidher. All rights reserved.