For the major project, we have done one shooting so far located in the central kitchen of Shandongmama, interviewing Wang Miao who is the nephew of the owner of Shandongmama. At the same time I also shot a decent amount of B-roll footages in the central kitchen such as dumpling making, filling making, packaging and the overview of the kitchen.

 

The interview went very smooth. We managed to shoot the best quality footage in a limited environment. Due to the construction structure, the audio was slightly affected by the traffic sounds outside of the building but it was acceptable. However because of the main light was natural light, the lighting was not very consistent therefore I had to change the setting on my camera during the interview, this slightly affected the visual of the footage. Those are the two main issues we had during the filming, everything else worked very well and we managed to finish the shooting within two hours.

 

In the post-production, the information in the interview will have to be carefully selected, because the original footage was 8-minute long, so we have to only select the most valuable parts from it to achieve the best quality. After we started doing the editing we realized that the B-roll footage was still not enough. Because the kitchen was only making raw dumpling during the day we went there, so the footage was too simplex, this means we will have to arrange another shooting to shoot more footage for B-roll. Scenes like boiling the dumplings, Samantha eating the dumplings, stir-frying dishes and detailed shots in the kitchen will be necessary.

 

In my opinion, we are on the right track with this film. We are gaining more information from the interview and the flow of the film is becoming clearer and clearer. The answers we are getting from the interviewee is close to what I thought, so the plan I had for the film is still working well and I believe the structure will have a clear shape after we finish shooting the second interview.