HERITAGE PROJECT
I was initially nervous about filming and interviewing somebody I’d not previously met, and also curious as to how much we’d be trusted with equipment, camera-wise, etc, but I was pleasantly surprised that at some times it was just students filming. I think this showed me that students are trusted with equipment and being given responsibility can be nerve-wracking but it’s also exciting to prove you can do something and to learn on the spot.
When we got there, we set up the position of the interviewee, and the camera and lights around her. The first issue was that one of the bulbs in one of the dedo-lights was orange, and therefore we couldn’t use it, as this wasn’t the type of light we wanted, and so we tried to make the most efficient use of the two lights we had, without casting any shadows visible in shot. Obviously the problem was that this hadn’t been checked and this can be resolved in the future by checking kit before we leave with it, and also next time it would be better to have an extension cable available for the lights, as I found we were asking if there were any more plug sockets available – we were lucky that there were.
Job roles were divided well, Mark checked that we were all happy with our roles – and I was the only person who knew how to work the zoom mic, so I was automatically the most suitable person for sound. I was fine with this, as this was a sensible option, but I did forget that you had to press the record button twice before it starts to record and so I missed the first question, thinking it was working! This was my fault and it was simply a case of me forgetting, but now it’s happened, I’ll remember in the future. Another problem we had with sound was that of the batteries dying, and us not having any spares – G-Man kindly went to go and get some for us. I’d never used the zoom mic for longer than 20 minutes, and so never had to worry about it’s batteries, but one thing I’ve learnt from it is the endurance of the batteries it uses and how long you get from it, something I’d not known before.
G-Man was there and he provided a nice link between all of us, as he knew both the crew and the interviewee and so it never felt too awkward or anything.
Other problems we faced were underestimating the time it took to interview somebody (the problems we had slowed us down a little and the interview after the one we did had to be cancelled and done at a later date), and our interviewee kept going off topic rather frequently, but I don’t know what I could have done personally to solve these problems - you can’t rush an interviewee when they’re telling you details about their personal life, and I wasn’t given any time-keeping responsibilities. I guess what I can take from that though, is to always give myself more time than I think I need just in case of problems - contingency.
So there were a few hiccups, but with it being the first day I guess this can be considered expected – things can and often do go wrong and you learn from them and how to be prepared should they ever happen again in the future, things such as taxis getting lost, bulbs being orange, batteries dying and files taking too long to transfer as they were raw files, and therefore really large file sizes. I definitely learnt a lot from these things happening, and it comes to down to practice making perfect, and teaching us more things to be prepared for.
Overall I thought it was a good environment for learning, with hands on experience, some problem-solving under pressure, and if something went wrong or I didn't know something I still felt like I could ask for help - kind of like how I wish BYFA had been.
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