Last Tuesday was the BIG DAY!!!
Last Monday we finally hammered out our final draft interview questions, and signed our gear out for Tuesdays interview!
We drove out to Chris's studio and took some B-roll shots while we waited for him to walk over. Started out a little bit shakey-- both Kelsey's hand and the weather, but we got a few good shots of the trees and his studio and the surrounding area outside of the studio. Chris showed up and we promptly made his walk back from where he came from-- several times over so we could get a few shots of him walking towards the studio. We seemed a little crazy, and I think he though so too, but he complied, and over and over again he walked around puddles, walked towards his studio and opened the door, over and over again. I don't think he thought he would have to work so hard.
Together with him we tried to arrange his little studio for our interview. This was a bit of a challenge because the sun was at an angle that was causing glare on the screen through the glass door, but the lighting in the studio was going to pick up on the camera, and we didn't have a better option but to try and squeeze Chris and Julia at a bit of an awkward angle, and we ended up with the camera at not the most ideal angle.. We were a little bit frazzled after it took us so long to deal with setting up the room and figuring out lighting-- and we realized that we were missing one of the cords we needed to use the sound piece-- that Chris ended up being on an awkward angle for the interview.. I think this is something that takes practice to do and get right. After looking at our footage on the screen I can definitely point out things on the screen that we could have and should have done differently, but we didn't think of at the time, or the constraints of the space didn't allow us to.
One thing that I'm not crazy about in our interview is that we ended up not having one of the cords for the sound piece, so we had to use my cell phone, but we didn't place it in a good spot, so its very noticeable on the tape. I thought about it when I put it down on the desk behind Chris, but I was worried that if we moved it to a less conspicuous place, our sound would be more compromised. I guess these are mistakes to learn from.
Once we finally got everything sorted out and everyone was in position for the interview everyone sort of got to take a deep breathe and just go with it from there on in. The first question got a little bit of a rocky start, but by the next question Chris was on a roll. He was great, totally calm in front of the camera, and very open with his answers. I really appreciated this in Chris. After the first question or two we asked him to respond in a way which repeated the question that Julia asked in his responses, and from then on he was good about doing that.
I thought his interview was really interesting. I found myself captivated by his answers and nodding my head at the things he was saying. After we finished up we asked Chris is he would take us to his office in his house so we get some footage of him at his computer, flipping through his computer work, and we managed to get a few small interview clips inside there, which was good, although the footage is pretty dark, so we will see how we can fix that up!
We were all pretty stoked when we left! It felt like a huge weight had finally been lifted off our shoulders now that the filming was over and it's time to sit down and edit. Despite the angle of our interview, I think our footage turned out pretty well! I think we asked good questions and good good responses!
Hopefully we will be able to cut together a cohesive film! Lets see how editing goes!!
