Reflection:

I think overall I was pleased with how the video ended up, I thought the tone of the piece was good and consistent and fell naturally into what Patrick was saying throughout the interview. The most successful aspects of the work I thought were definitely the colour and look of the shots, and also the clarity of the audio recording. I shot on a Canon DSLR which I knew had a very questionable audio recording mechanic so I borrowed a portable zoom recorder and it worked great. I was worried initially that I had placed it too low and when I plugged in my headphones into the recorder the audio wasn’t great but I have had some experience with portable recorders and knew the sound you heard through the headphones was not an accurate representation of how the audio will come out. Luckily the audio for the interview came out really well and I was very relieved with the clarity of the interview. I knew when planning where to shoot the interview that it needed to be indoors and in a very quiet, non reflective environment to make sure the audio was well recorded.

Initially the colour and appearance of the shots were very average, very white and had a general lack of expression from them and I knew I had to do a lot of work with the colour grading to get them looking how I wanted them to. After a lot of experimenting with the colour correction and grading aspects of Premiere I came out really liking the tone and colouring of the video, having a darker tone, with a nice smooth blue tinge to a lot of the outside shots really matched the content of the interview I felt.

The main problems I encountered were mainly in the pre production aspects of the interview portrait as I knew from the outset I did not want to be in video, wanting to frame the interview more in the documentary style where it appears more like the subject is talking straight to the audience and telling their story that way instead of it being interrupted by an interviewer talking and shots of me nodding. I always felt that in some interviews these elements really broke apart the tone and vibe of the video and I didn’t want to make that mistake. This project gave me a lot of experience and new knowledge on how to create a body of work that required a lot of emphasis on pre production and planning which I will definitely remember in future projects. 

This was a very different style of project than I was used to doing as most of the work I’ve done in the past have focused on music and visuals, whereas this project focused on dialogue, pushing the music to a purely background element. This was invaluable experience to learn as many future projects will focus on dialogue to motivate and compel the story.