week 5 workshop

activity: learning how to use the Sony MC50 by making a quick interview

Having little to no experience with a film camera, I was excited to begin this task so that I could quickly learn and experiment with the functions of the Sony MC50. Additionally having Sophia, Callum and Euan in my group just made the task extra enjoyable since they are all such lively, amusing characters to work with.

Deciding to take a comedic Office/Parks and Rec style to the interview, we improvised most of our takes and just left the script open to what our creative story-telling skills were capable of making. Many tips from Michael Rabiger’s “Conducting and Shooting Interviews” kept surfacing in my mind as we went through the activity, especially as I took on the role as the Interviewer. I noticed that I was naturally did my best to engage the interviewee, mostly by nodding and maintaining eye contact so that they felt encouraged to talk more. I also noticed that I would accidentally reply with “mhmm”s while they talked which immediately made those takes unusable. So, I made a mental note that although it was a habit during conversations, for Project Brief 3, I had to make sure I remained silent as I listened to the interviewees answers. Another thing I learned while editing the footage was how critically important it is to plan before the interview. As we were all so keen to just dive into the experiment, the mistake of not planning to questions and structure of the documentary made it so difficult to sift through the haystack of footage to find that needle of a storyline.

Uni Lyfe from Tessa Chung on Vimeo.

Above is what I was able to create with all the footage my group made during the workshop. I was able to create some sort of storyline, however there were many times during the editing process where I wished that we had more takes of a certain shot, an extra scene to fill the gaps, more b-roll, etc. Thus, as I plan for PB3, other than just creating questions to ask my interviewee, I need to think about how I can create a linear and compelling story through these questions.