Basic Interview shoot

Last week I did a shoot with the two boys from Pink Lemon (Pop – up shop for artist/ designers).

Unfortunately there was no more cameras left for the day so I had to make do with a camera model that I was unfamiliar with.

During this shoot I wanted to focus on the set up of frame and explore how setting up frame on a tripod would compare to a hand held camera. I also wanted to test run the questions that were drafted in my previous post ‘Questions to get us going’.

The first shot I set up was on a tripod in my garage (this is where the Pink Lemon boys do most of their work.). For this first frame I decided to interview Hamish.

Screen Shot 2016-05-23 at 8.44.08 PM

I found that during this interview Hamish had a very quiet voice. He didn’t seem comfortable sitting face on to a camera sticking into his face. I had to do a lot of talking and would only get very straight forward answers. For this reason alone I wanted to take a second shoot but it wasn’t until I uploaded the videos onto my computer that I realised I had hit the wrong button for white balance on the camera.

Beyond this I found the frame to look very two dimensional. After meeting with Paul he helped me come up with some other ways of adding life to a frame like this e.g. moving the couch forward and away from the wall, white balancing and  coming in from other angles a there really isn’t much in this frame.

So I went back and decided to do it properly and this time get both boys in the shot.

Screen Shot 2016-05-23 at 8.50.26 PM

I shot this frame hand held, but I also decided to put the computer in front of Hamish. This was probably the best thing I could have done. As soon as the tripod was out of his face, he had his computer in front of him and someone else next to him I couldn’t stop him from talking. I had very little talking to do here. Although the frame is over exposed the content in here is gold! The boys would feed of each others answers and get lost in their world, drifting far off topic and into some really interesting ideas. Unfortunately for me I had failed to record sound, and this disaster left me frustrated at the loss.

The shoot was not perfect, I definitely made some mistakes but I am confident that next time will be better. I need to slow down and go through all my checks before I do my final step of hitting the record button.

I was at least able to develop my questions and get them to a level that I feel confidant in expanding on where I see fit. I also got a feel for having to develop questions on the spot and squeezing more information out of the places that I saw needed more attention (unfortunately the lack of recorded sound doesn’t allow me deeply reflect on this part).

I learnt how to adapt to my surrounds and my artists. Making them feel comfortable and feel as if they aren’t being filmed is key!

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