Blossoming Business: The Joe Leuzzi Story
Synopsis/ YouTube description
Joe Leuzzi Flower’s has been a familiar sight at the Queen Victoria Market since the late 1990’s where the vibrant floral displays attract hundreds of tourists and customers each week. Joe Leuzzi the founder and owner of his blossoming business describes in this exclusive interview the hardships of the industry and the gruelling early morning starts. Of course Joe describes the inspirations behind starting his own business and where his passions lie in the floristry industry. Joe goes into detail about the importance of florists in everyday life and how the diversity of colours can make the customers very happy. Joe explains how running a business full-time can mean he misses crucial time with his family but with his wife working alongside him and some of his children, he has been able to get the support from his close nit family.
2016 Michael Serpell video portrait (RMIT University)
Reflection
My Dad went to high school with Joe Leuzzi and both my Dad and Joe are still very close friends and as a result the Leuzzi’s are great family friends. When contemplating whose story to represent in the form of a video portrait I didn’t look any further than Joe Leuzzi. Joe being a male florist with an interesting back-story and most evidently is a man in a female dominated industry that has successfully founded and maintained a highly respected business. As far as the filming aspect side of things went I was impressed with the b-roll footage containing shots of Joe working hard in the floristry, cutting, wrapping and tying beautiful bunches of flowers for sale. The day-to-day processes of maintaining a successful flower shop were outlined in the b-roll footage and explained well by the accompaniment of Joe’s audio recording. Therefore I was very satisfied with the footage in conjunction with the audio-recorded interview. Considering I already knew Joe very well and because he is a good family friend to us I found it very easy to ask the personalized questions and he was very easy to work with, which certainly made my job easier. The problematic aspects of the work was the filmed interview with Joe was undertaken during a very busy business time of the day, therefore none of Joe actually speaking is shown as the audio is too distorted. The audio recording device I used was too powerful and not correctly tuned therefore it picked up Joe’s voice too well and it came out very distorted. Therefore I had to re-record the interview at a quieter time of the day but that wasn’t an issue as I was able to tweak the questions to get the desired results for the video portrait. As far as administration went, on the day I was sent the corrected public liability insurance for $20 million from RMIT for the council as I was shooting in public area. That was luckily registered hastily by the City of Melbourne and I was granted permission under the low impact-filming clause to film at the Queen Victoria Market at Joe Leuzzi’s flower shop. Through the editing I did learn how to transform multiple clips of film and be able to synchronize four separate video clips at the once and play those simultaneously on the screen at once. It was something creative I’ve never tried before, the reasoning behind it was to show Joe was a very busy man with a numerous array of roles, which he needed to fill at his place of work. The voice over is Joe describing he was regretful he couldn’t be there more for his children and that his job was extremely strenuous. I learnt as a media practitioner that things on your day of shooting won’t all go to plan and you have to be flexible with your subjects. You need to respect their time restraints and their answers but equally if things are going astray you need to keep your cool and always have a plan B. I was fortunate enough to patch up my minor technical difficulties with the audio but I certainly learnt a valuable lesson about being able to create new on the spot solutions when things go wrong.
Michael Serpell