Most of my successes in making this interview occurred in post. I find I am naturally a better editor than I am a writer or interviewer. I was successful, however, in gathering an abundance of original content in the form of audio/visual media. This included filler shots that I took in relation to my interviewee of old pictures and photo albums. One of the problems that I encountered in obtaining these extra shots and pieces of footage was staying out of other peoples’ ways. There were scenes that I would like to have filmed in a café with my interviewee, however the space was so small and the owners were too busy for me to ask them to fill out release forms. However, ultimately I was also able to film high quality imagery of my interviewee ‘in action,’ following her through her day in town.
This point of positivity was also a problem for me, as I found that my roughcuts were so full of content from the original 15 minute long interview, that there was no room to ‘breathe.’ The roughcut, bordering on exactly 3 minutes, was simply too congested with too much information at once and multiple inorganic and jarring cuts between AV content that to watch it was not as easy as I was hoping for.
This issue was solved by returning to the video a few hours after last watching it, and then coming back with a more critical mindset and cutting out unnecessary or irrelevant parts of the interview that I wouldn’t require.
Another issue that I came into conflict with in the making of my PB3 interview was finding the central driving force of my interviewee’s narrative. I wanted the major ‘theme’ of the interview to be about how having lived so long, fully and richly has led to my interviewee becoming a witty, fascinating and wise woman. When I understood that this was a struggle for me, I came back to the interview roughcut and rearranged the interview’s structure in a way that clarified the central concerns of her narrative.
Another problem that I encountered in the making of this interview was finding relevant found footage to put alongside my interviewee’s storytelling. I wanted to highlight the fact that she has lived in Melbourne for most of her life since 1933, however on archives.org it was difficult to find images or footage that showed Melbourne specifically. I could have solved this issue by finding other sources of archival footage under creative commons licenses.
On the whole, I discovered in the making of this interview that I have the capability to problem solve on the go when creating a media product. I encountered varying complications in the pre-production, production and post-production stages of my film, and managed to overcome each one. This highlights to me that as I continue to create and practice my skills, I will have the experience and understanding to overcome future issues as a media practitioner in my future career.
