Self Portrait2 from Joey on Vimeo.

Reflection:

For this project we were asked to shoot an interview. For me it was quite the experience trying to organize and prepare for a one on one in depth interview with a talent Because I have never really interviewed someone one on one privately before so, I was quite nervous going through the whole process. To the keep the interview simple, I decided to interview one of my co-workers, because I thought with his experience, he would have something interesting things to say. After I shot my interview and edited a sample of what I’ve done and recorded, my classmates told me I had too much cutaways. At first I wasn’t ever really thinking I had too much cutaways, because I initially thought I was still lacking something during the editing process. For me it felt so plain, but unfitting, and my classmates told me off for that, and I accepted the criticism and changed some parts. Such as making the font look older than fonts used in recent years. I was also told that some of my shots felt repetitive, and didn’t really correlate to the person that was talking. As I learnt from this project, that having too much footage can be a bad thing, because it just increases the work load, because I would have to pick and choose sections I want in the video. What I found the most challenging thing to do while shooting this interview, was to know who and where I can shoot, because sometime’s getting permission can be tedious. I only managed to get permission from the store holder, for filming him and the store, however I didn’t have permission or never really bothered getting permission from customers. So for the majority of the shots I used for cutaway, I purposely left any customers in the store out, so I wouldn’t have to deal with them. But it’s something I’m going to have to get use to, and that is filming in public, right now I’m not confident to film and get permission in public.

One of the most important thing I learnt about was how to ask questions in an interview. Considering I wanted long answers to my questions, I really needed to think how could I ask a certain question, because some of them started simple, then I would add more to have my interviewee clarify for me. Considering I cover and interview random people at conventions as a hobby, this project helped introduced me into another world of interviewing people. Because I had to learn the full process, of getting permission and working around my guest. Normally I would be nervous asking any strangers to interview, but with someone like this close to us, it feels like we have to impress him to.

What I can take and move on from this project, is learn how to adapt and adjust my self to edit in a pace that works with the interviewee. Because at first my draft was considered a bit fast and not fitting with the theme of the old man. Another thing I can learn from this exercise is learn how to treat the people around me, when doing an interview, learning to respect the interviewee and working alongside with them to get a successful interview off. Learning and organizing forms for myself and guests are another thing I have to go through one day, and when we did this project, it was a step for us because media practitioners, because we are going to need a lot more permission forms to most likely shoot in the future.

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