REFLECTION (September 4th, 2009)

"Today" (today with the quotes because it's NOT today) Vikki, Katrina and I went to film for our interview "task". We borrowed a tripod and a camera (no microphone because apparently we're not supposed to use it, but then it kind of caused some problems, I'll get to that later) and we went around the school looking for people to film.
Since this was our first filming task we were all kind of confused and we didn't know what type of shots we were supposed to use, so Vikki and I went to look for THOMSON LOONG (the NUMBER ONE FILM NERD) and asked him but *GASP* HE DOESN'T KNOW. Luckily we bumped into Alex, who is in our group, on our way up and he told us that we were supposed to use the long shot, medium shot and close up.
I was originally supposed to be interviewer but when I started testing the camera I kind of got hooked and I switched roles with Katrina so I became Camera Operator and she was interviewer. Vikki was the sound person/assistant camera operator (because she had the earphones).
We decided to film in the library since there are a lot of people in the library and there's bound to be someone who is willing to be interviewed, and also Lizzy is in the library and she promised Katrina that she will be interviewed.
SO ANYWAY. THAT'S WHEN THE PROBLEMS START COMING COMING....COMING!!
At first we wanted to film in the bags area, with Liz and Katrina standing near the counter and me at the shelf (so I could get the long shot, and NO I'm not very skilled). But then we sort of realized that we were BLOCKING A BUNCH OF PEOPLE and the people all thought we were from the CIS Friday Morning News (NO!!!) and started asking us stuff like "what's on the news?" "is this Friday Morning News?" "Can I be on the news?". So we moved away because that area was too cramped anyway. And then Katrina has a brilliant idea, WE GO FILM FROM THE STAIRS! So Lizzy and Katrina stood at the bottom of the top part of the stairs while me and Vikki stand on top and film down. We ended up taking up the whole top part of the stairs and no one could go up or down and a bunch of people were crowding around us waiting to go down (i don't know why they all suddenly want to go down, I mean usually not that many people go down anyway). I, being the awesomely nice camera person, let them down the stairs between shots and closed off the area when we started, BUT WHEN WE STARTED AGAIN KATRINA AND LIZZY BOTH MOVED so it won't have good continuity. PROBLEM. The thing is I don't know how to switch shots without cutting in between shots. Last year in film Ms Riddell said that in interviews they do the scene a few times, each filming from a different angle with a different type of shot, but we don't have the time so we had to pause! And I MESSED UP, you'll see why when you see what I made, but Lizzy did the interview very good and provided us with detailed answers.
The second person we interviewed was a Year 8 kid who was really interested in Global Issues (I know he is because I interviewed him last year for FMN and he said he liked the News as his favorite TV show). We filmed from the shelves at the back with me standing at the "front" of the shelves and him standing at the back. He did the interview quite well and understood the instructions that we gave him, but I MESSED UP because I said "go" a few times before they actually started so I think the microphone picked that up (PROBLEM with using the built in microphone), but we could always edit it out.
We had some problems looking for the last person, because it's about the Blue Sky Campaigne and almost NO ONE has heard of it. We tried asking the librarians, but they were all busy so in the end we asked Kenneth, who hasn't heard of the Campaigne, but I thought it would be good to have someone who doesn't know about it answer the question because that would probably show that the general public doesn't know about the Campaigne and that it should have better publicity. THE PROBLEM with this part was that Kenneth's friends were standing next to us and they were talking and Vikki and I could hear them from our earphones (the other people were all really smart and stopped talking when we filmed, but NO-OH...) so we had to "shush" them a couple of times before we started.
Overall, I think it was quite a fun experience and I learned quite a lot about the actual techniques of using a camera when we are given some shots that we HAVE to do. Last year we just had to find movement and it didn't matter how we filmed it at all; and in Friday Morning News, everyone just used Medium Closeups or Medium Shots and sometime Long Shots and edited in the closeups and everything when we did our editing. I also learned that MAKING SACRIFICES IS A PART OF FILMMAKING, because we had to SKIP LUNCH and stuff. Next time, hopefully we could be more organized and try not to block other people when we film, because I think we caused quite an inconvenience to those people. I think we should also USE MICROPHONES, but the chords aren't that long so it might be hard to do the long shot. ANYWAY, I have to SLEEP...

OVER AND OUT :)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: When life gives you lemons, make apple juice.