This is my final project brief three, an interview with Asher Johnson, head of the non-profit, Act Three. Asher is an extremely dedicated man and it really shows in the final edited project.

The video is entitled “A New Kind of Theatre” and it explores the idea of humanitarian theatre and the effect theatre performance has on students in a high school context.

Positive Reflection:

I started the project relatively simply, I had conducted a few interviews before and had a fairly strong understanding of where the video was headed from the outset. For this reason, I didn’t create a shotlist or storyboard as I knew I would only be using a few key angles from the recorded interview and mixing in B-roll of specific key moments I could find from others who had been on trips who were happy to share their footage with the internet. Once I began cutting the footage together, I noticed how fantastic the mood worked. Each answer seemed to fit even better than I expected which is absolutely a testament to Asher’s charisma. I asked only a few questions and he was able to very quickly latch onto the key ideas I was trying to draw out and talked for a long time and knowing him this was not surprising. The interview went for nearly forty-five minutes but I ended up with some fantastic content. The process of finding music was long and painful because it was hard to find something that matched the ambient/non-culturally specific feel I wanted for the soundtrack, in the end the YouTube Audio Library was incredibly helpful and I found it had the best music of any Creative Commons website.

Questions:

“When did you personally first realise that bringing theatre to disadvantaged communities was something you wanted to do?”

“What kind of experience do the students get out of the trips as a whole?”

“Where would you like to take the organisation and the trips in the future?”

and “What effect does performing in a theatrical environment have on young teens and do you think that the impact changes them for life?”

Negative Reflection:

Looking back on the interview, though I do feel that it is a great video with a well constructed idea, the video feels more like an advertisement than a portrait and this was frustrating, as I think the problem resided in my questions. I really felt that Asher’s dream was important in capturing who he is, though the interview is very extrinsic and doesn’t really look at Asher under the surface on a personal level. I think in many ways, the actual interview was extremely successful but it doesn’t, to me, feel like it nails the brief because it lacks the depth of a real video portrait. I did try in my interview to encourage Asher to share more about why he came to Australia and his specific family reasons, without getting into detail, I think a lot of that is very private and I didn’t feel there was a comfortable way to approach the subject, though, I wish I had have found a way in hindsight because it would have added a dynamic to the video I would have liked to see.