Interview Self-Reflection BSA 101 (Intro to Film) Week 13

Post-Interview Self-Reflection

This is a self-assessment on the unedited version of my BSA101 Edited Interview Assessment, covering technical areas like lighting, sound and camerawork. I wasn’t too happy with my performance on this assessment and feel not only disappointed with the footage I ended up producing, but also that I could have done a much better job.

Location: I wanted something with depth but made the terrible decision to set up in a corner, while the shadows could be interesting it ended up looking a bit grungy and cheap. By the time I had the first set-up done we had to shoot and this race against time meant I ended up with a location and composition that I was not very happy with. Even moving back a bit or

filming in one of the larger rooms would have made the shot feel much less claustrophobic. My framing didn’t help make the shot look any more professional as I had way too much negative space above the subject's head - the thinking on the day being that I wanted to include the pictures on the wall in the frame. In hindsight this was a bad choice on my behalf as it creates a distance between the viewer and the person talking. Zooming in on the subject would have established a better point of focus and would have created a more professional looking interview.

Shadows: The lights were too close to the subject which resulted in hard shadows on the back walls and across the face. This is once again the trouble with where I set up - if given the chance I would move the camera and lighting setup back (as there was plenty of space in the room I worked with). This change would not only have resulted in a more interesting background (in which the paintings could be seen naturally while still allowing me to be close to the subject), but it would have resulted in much softer shadows and more naturalistic lighting.

Grain: The very first thing I noticed when reviewing the footage was the grain. On location, looking at the small screen on the camera everything seemed fine - it was only once I got the footage ingested that I realized I had the gain way too high. In future this will be the first thing I check and as I learned on my second day of B-Roll, changing the other settings and leaving the gain on low results in a much better picture.

B-Roll: I didn’t get the B-Roll footage that I wanted and what I ended up with was not at all fitting for the footage I used. Some of these things are situational but if I was more direct with my subject about what exactly I wanted - e.g. her working with a customer - then I might have been able to get what I needed. What I wanted was repeatable action and I think my questions were open ended enough to allow for some to be generated - specifically my question about her daily routine - however, with the amount of time my subject was available for and what she did for most of the time I was there (work on the computer, not exactly riveting B-Roll) I ended up not acquiring the necessary footage I desired. If I had another chance I would have asked her if there were times throughout the day that she worked with customers in which I could do some B-Roll filming. I would have loved to get B-Roll supportive of her answers about working with customers as this was one of the main points she kept bringing up. The second day, after looking at the previous days footage, I had produced a list of shots I wanted to capture for extra B-Roll, most of which would have included the talent in some way or another,

unfortunately she was very busy and not in any particular mood to act so I once again failed procuring good B-Roll. Assessing the footage and coming back for B-Roll was a very good idea though, as it provided me with a better understanding of what exactly I needed for the final edit.

The last problem I have with the B-Roll I got was that the pans were very clunkily done and fine tuning the smoothness of it might have helped make it cleaner.

Subject Eyeline: I also messed up with where my talent was looking, after a while of filming I realized that she was looking directly at me which was a very weird angle considering the lighting set-up (a large factor in why the ugly shadow of her nose is present). What I should have done at this point was move myself between the key light and the camera and that way naturally align her line of sight without ever having to rudely interrupt her - however I didn’t do this because I wanted to keep an eye on the camera, a futile notion since I never needed to move it in the end.

Time Limit: The time constraints I worked with were quite nasty, the first day I only had her available for half an hour - which I used to film the interview in (I ended up getting about 25 minutes of her talking) - and about two hours set-up time, including b-roll. Unsatisfied with my B-Roll after the first day, I asked her if I could come in the next day, same time, and shoot some more, she agreed to this. Unfortunately I only had about an hour to do so and about half an hour in which she was available to be in front of the camera. I felt that this would be more than enough time as I would only require the tripod and camera and would forego the use of professional lighting or sound. On the day things went awry again, as they do, and her meeting ran late and she had to run and extra errand, all of which skimmed about thirty minutes of my time. I asked her to step in front of the camera once, but not wanting to waste her time I left it at that and retired to simply filming the paintings and rooms again.

By the time someone had accepted to do an interview with me (after three other attempts) I had less than a week left to film. This meant that she had to try and fit me into a very busy schedule and the fact that I had so little time with her was simply because of how close to the submission date I was doing my assessment. In hindsight I should have been much more assertive in finding someone to interview in the early stages of the project, because even if I made the same mistakes I could have easily recovered with re-shoots.

Sound: My sound work sounded acceptable, the biggest mistake I made with it was that halfway through the interview I hinted at the fact that the refrigerator in the back was making quite the fuss - I did this jokingly as I didn’t expect it could be turned off, but lo and behold the talent did it quickly and the rest of the interview sounded much cleaner. In future I should do a thorough inspection of the surrounding area when I get on set and immediately start finding ways to cancel out audio disturbances, instead of what I did here, which was keep it to myself.

While this project was an undoubted failure I think I have a lot to take away from it in terms of what I’ve learnt and I will be taking all of these lessons on board for my future projects.