Our first class for the week took a slightly different turn than usual as most of the class was dedicated to listening to other people’s observations. It was quite interesting hearing about the observations that other people have made and being questioned whether it has ‘filming potential’. This made me curious as to how can you actually turn an observation into a film. I mean, most of the observations I’ve been writing I only see as some sort of background event or a passing moment, but not actually the essence of a film. But then again, some slight adjustments in writing could turn an observation into filming potential.

This week, our second individual exercise is also due where we needed to film an informal interview. I decided film mine in a ’70 Questions’ style where the subject would look straight into the camera as if they were speaking to person in real life and answer questions as the camera would follow them around if they were moving. My main concern was figuring out a way to film this in a mobile fashion considering how heavy the camera is. I finally came to the decision of experimenting with the camera and film it handheld despite its weight and foreshadowing how shaky the recorded footage would be.

When it came to reviewing and editing the video, as well as an unexpected and unavoidable illness which heavily affected my effort game, I found myself quite disappointed in myself. The idea for the video was there, but it was the execution and presentation of it that really brought me down. Improvements for next time would have to be to film in a more quiet environment, as I had filmed it on campus, outside, with the back of buildings and air conditioners (or exhaust pipes, or whatever it’s actually called), and to top it off, windy weather. I struggled to reduce the noise of these external sounds without losing total quality of the voices. And speaking of voices, another improvement would be to have a second microphone, as I was the one asking the questions and it’s really hard to hear what I was saying.

This would be the second time this year where I have had to interview someone and comparing it to the first one I made (which you can watch here), I guess it’s more of an eye-opener that I could do so much better and really consider the improvements that need to be taken into account if I have to interview someone again. But my disappointment aside, I am happy at the fact that I took on a different style of interviews and actually gave the whole ’70 Questions’ concept a try as it’s something that I thought would always be pretty cool to film. And filming it was quite fun, but there is definitely a lot of improvements that need to be made next time I attempt this concept.