Yay! After a week’s wait it’s finally week 8 workshop and we can find out the result of our no edit pursuit exercise.

We spent a bit of time before that to show our peers of our interviews. I was really impressed that one of my classmate James used a drone to film part of his interview, and it came out REALLY COOL. Like seriously cool. I always find it practical to share and listen to feedbacks because they always teach me stuffs that I didn’t know how to do before. I was really happy that Brooke interviewed her best friend’s little sister. The interviewee is 7 year old too so same age as my daughter. Our interviews are pretty similar.

No Edit – The Pursuit from Joey on Vimeo.

The pursuit. Other’s group’s videos are really great. Each group had their own issues. One of them had premiere pro rearranged their footage’s order so it isn’t 100% of what’s in their mind. For our group, it wasn’t until screening that we found out there’s a lot of unwanted footage that we accidentally included in the final product. Click play above to see what I mean.

I have to say, when I opened this week’s reading, my daughter is way more excited than me, because she is a Harry Potter fans, me, not that much.

With the video showed in lecture, iguana vs snake, I am engaged straight away because of the tension and suspense (thank you, cinema studies), it is sort of like an action movie played by the animals. I felt nervous while watching it, hoping the iguana can escape, and felt disappointed when the snakes got it. Then I felt relieved when it managed to escape again and joined its own kind.

The viewing-marathron video is funny, I so can relate to that because that’s what I’ll do at home watching Chinese TV shows, and leaving my assignments until the very last minute.

Rebekah and I were very excited to know that PB3’s due date has been extended, woohoo!

I am looking forward to tomorrow’s workshop to watch our no edit pursuit exercise.

Happy daughter from Bonita Leung on Vimeo.

Phew! I think my final submission is so much better than what I have imagined. I was so lost during the past few weeks. PB3 feels so different from PB2 because for PB2, I had a very strong feeling of what I want to film, but for PB3, I have been so lost, so lost that even my classmates know about this. I was not sure what to ask, I was not sure where to shoot this interview. I feel like all my peers are interview really interesting people like chimney cleaner, people with special disease/conditions, people with unusual career, and here I am, interviewing my 7 year old daughter.

The weather forecast said it was going to rain when I borrowed the camera but luckily there was a bit of sunny time so I grab my daughter and went to our local park and film it while we can. The outdoor lighting is awesome.

I think the background music works really well with the happy feeling of my video. (Caitlin helped me chose it too :)) To be honest I was sort of like half-give-up and was just having a normal conversation with her and the topic of happiness suddenly came into my mind. When I was still pregnant with her, I went for my antenatal check up, the OB listened to her heartbeat and told me that she is a happy baby. Luckily this is still the case until she was complaining about being thirsty and wanted to go home, so we ended the local park filming and filmed more footages at home about her toys.

I like how my interview shows her true personality because she is usually a bit shy and quiet when there’s strangers present. I can’t help myself laughing at her silly moments, I included those in the video hoping that other audiences will laugh too, as Caitlin mentioned in the video that she wants to ‘spread the happiness to other people’. I was relieved when I showed the video to some of my friends and they said it worked. They felt happy when they were watching the video. As an adult I found it more difficult to be truely happy as what we used to do when we were little kids. It is also a reminder of how pure and simple children’s worlds are, and how little things is sufficient to make they happy.

As of the funny moments, I think the zooming in of her expressions when she said I do her chores for her worked really well. It emphasizes how cheeky she is and enhance the laughing factor too. This effect was inspired by some videos that I watched on Facebook.

I think I can work better on video transitions because there are a few places where I feel the cut is too sharp, too short and too sudden. I was also worried about the background music not lowered enough to be able to listen to what Caitlin says, but at the same time I am also worried about if I lowered the background music too much, the difference when it comes back up loud again when there’s no one talking is too sharp. Feedback welcome on this.

So…after the workshop, I took Caitlin with me and went down to level 1 hoping to book a MC50 to use over the Easter break, thinking that it’s a week advance, shouldn’t have any issues with that.

And the guy told me it’s-all-booked-out.

Boo.

He was very nice and offered me to borrow today (Thursday) and return it next Monday, so 1 day extra. I really don’t have the time to do so because I have a 1200 word essay due the next day and will be spending the whole weekend working on my group presentation on Monday. Plus I can’t handle carrying a camera plus a tripod, when I have to take care of Caitlin, and we have to take public transport home. I will have to use something else, like my mobile, to film something and create a rough cut for the next workshop (sorry Hannah!), then borrow the proper thing and film footages the next weekend with my rough cut as a guide.

I hope my plan goes accordingly.

This week’s workshop was different for me because I have my daughter, Caitlin, with me due to the school holidays.

In this week’s workshop we showed our peers the interview exercise we edited last week. We used the hat system again and gave each other feedbacks.

Then we have to complete this really interesting exercise where we have to shoot a long shot, and the topic is ‘misunderstanding’. My group mates decided to use the fact that Caitlin is here and wearing matching dresses with me. However we are stuck about how to follow the topic of ‘misunderstanding’. We struggled with the storyboard while other groups are already planned and headed outside to shoot.

We came up with something after some advice by our teacher. We went outside and commerce filming without any rehearsal. I found it difficult to follow the camera person but not to be in the frame because I am the key to unveil the misunderstanding but I keep bumping into the video. We filmed 3 times and decided to present the second take. If you pay attention you can still see me trying to run away from the camera in the background.

Today we have a guest speak in lecture, Paul Ritchard, to come and speak to us more about conducting an interview.

I was secretly glad that I did not bring my daughter with me to Uni today because there’s some swearing involved.

Then Brian took over and showed us some PB3 from past students. I always find it helpful to look at past students’ work because they inspire me and makes it easier to decided what kind of feel do I want my interview to go towards. I think my PB3 will be quite similar to the one that the student interviewed his brother, as we are both interviewing our family member and it will be something quite light-hearted and about people who are under 18. I found the vision condition video very influential because honestly I was quite annoyed by the pro-longed cone vision effect and keep wondering when it is going to go away, and it wasn’t until the end that the interviewee has this vision condition and is seeing things like this all day long. I was surprised and felt really sorry for him.

In this week’s workshop, our teacher told us about PB3 and asked us to think of whom we would like to interview.

At first I thought my language services manager in Austin Health would be a good interviewee because she is a talkative and humorous person, we were really engaged to what she is trying to tell us about work or about her neighbour normally, so I thought audiences would be really engaged to listen to her talking about being born in Australia to Italy migrants parents and how she became an Italian interpreter. I gave up this idea as soon as I know we have to use the MC50 to shoot PB3 because she does not work during the weekends when that is my only free time to shoot and she is very busy as well.

I have decided to interview my daughter Caitlin instead, because she is with me most of the time, and it is easy to shoot some extra shots or audio if I forget something because she’s at home all the time with me, but I have trouble coming up with my interview questions because I know her too well.

This week we get to play with the Sony MC50 and familiarise ourselves with this camera that we will be going to use for our PB3.

I got divided into a group of classmates whom some I did not have a chance to work with before. We have Matt, Christian, Drizzle and me. We have to complete this exercise called ‘Survival guide for the first 6 weeks of Uni.’ I was worried about the back ground noise when they suggested shooting it at the basketball court behind building 80, but we decided to give it a try. It turns out the camera angle is more of the issues. We wasted like half of our time trying to figure out how to secure the camera on the tripod, so our footages are actually quite ‘rushed’ and a bit of everything because we want to try and make up for the time we wasted.

(credit from: https://pics.me.me/kids-interrupt-live-bbc-interview-16242214.png)

(Sorry but I can’t help using this meme, ha!)

I would rather submit 10 self portrait videos than to interview someone.

I am not a dominant person and do not consider myself good at being an interviewer. A conversation terminator would be more suitable to describe who I am.

I found it useful to know about the 5 Ws that was mentioned by the lady from ABC:  Where what who when why. The difference between pb2 and pb3 are, interviewing is not about yourself, but your interviewee. Briefing, like interpreting, is a good idea to help the interviewee to get prepared of what you are going to ask and what kind of direction you want it to go.

I found asking interview questions difficult, it is not as easy as I have thought. It has to be non-biased, neutral questions, can neither imply positive or negative answers, plus they have to be open ended.

It is interesting to learn ‘the noddie’, that is often seen on television interviews like 60 minutes or The current affairs.