PB3: JORDYN – a creative portrait
Project brief 3 was ultimately a challenge for me before it had even begun. I had chosen one of my close friends, Bron, who rides motorbikes across Guatemala and breaks world records for a living, initially. Though due to circumstance she was forced to cancel, and I ended up being faced with the difficulty of making a portrait about someone much more average, my friend Jordyn.
Planning and recording the interview, however ended up going smoothly. Working with cameras and recording devices is something I love. Though I found it quite difficult to not respond and bounce back at Jordyn’s answers to my questions with “mmhmm” and “yes totally”, it felt quite rude to keep quite the whole time and just nod, but it did save me a lot of editing time. It was really handy gaining this tip during a section one of our lectorials “The Art of The Interview”.
Editing audio has become quite a struggle for me, though I am comfortable with editing video at this point in the course, due to my previous experience with premiere, audio is another story. Most of my films in the past have been set to music, or completely silent, though these recent interviews are focussed solely on dialogue and speech. Clipping the beginnings and ends of words is something I’m quite good at, and it usually takes me around 30mins to fix all of this at the end as I’m too lazy to repair while I work, hopefully I’ll improve on this.
Experimenting with the found footage aspect of this project brief was really interesting and exciting, reviewing different websites and outlets of Creative commons and public domain content was something new that I was not used, but it has opened many new doorways to me in aspects of what I can now include in my films. I found Prelinger to be one of the best sites, along with the CC section of Vimeo. I used found footage to enhance the discussion my interviewee provided, which really amped up the tension and overall aesthetic of my film.
I attempted to incorporate and improve my film using the feedback I gained on my Project brief 2, it was stated that the audio was overcomplicated which background sounds in my previous project so I kept it simple with one voice over. Another comment I worked with was the fact that my friend’s perception on my was not enough to give a portrait on my myself, so this time round I allowed my friend to speak purely of herself with no other opinions of her being included. I feel this represents a better form of portrait.
I believe this project has taught me valuable skills in working with audio production as well as the use of found footage. I also learnt how to give attributions at the end of my films, and the different types of copyrights I can and cannot include in my school assignments. Working with Jordan ended up being extremly interesting and it allowed me to understand that one of the key fundamentals of interview is not how interesting your participant is, but rather the connection between interviewee and audience which counts.
Though my portrait began with the struggle of a canceled participant I believe that has taught me a lesson in always having a backup plan for when things go wrong. Usually I am not very good at keeping organised with my projects though this time round I tried to keep on top of all aspects of the projects which hopefully worked in my favour.