Hey, everyone! (LONG UPDATE!)
For this update, I wanted to say that my production went well on the 11th of March, and since then I’ve been in post-production. Post has been the most difficult process of this project, but I’ll save that for my next update, as I’m planning to send my cuts to Sharla in the coming days for her approval.
This update, however, is about how my production went… it was HORRIBLE!
Now, that’s a bit of an exaggeration but it definitely felt like an accurate word on the day. On the Monday of filming, only a few hours before my interviewees and I were meant to meet, a person I had confirmed since January backed out. It was really hard to deal with that as one of Sharla’s biggest pushes for me with this project was to have a wide age range, and this person who backed out would have been a branch for my other two interviewees, and it’s hard to get someone in a similar age range on a random Monday at the last minute. This person canceling also caused me to miss my bus to campus so that was a whole other issue haha.
Either way, this cancellation turned all of my plans upside down. The time I had set aside to prepare for my questions and rehearse what I was going to say was thrown out the window. Instead, my time went to contacting every single woman I knew and could rely on, asking them if they could come to film my project for a few hours. It sucked that every single person turned me down, but obviously understandable, though it did mess my morale a bit.
Thankfully, I had asked for two of my best friends’ help behind-the-scenes that day, and had to sacrifice one of them to be on camera. This threw off things for my other friend as she had to now be in charge of monitoring cameras and checking sound, when I had hoped one could be in charge of each. It also threw off how much time we had for filming itself, as my friend who I put on camera at the last second didn’t have the same time to prepare that I gave my other interviewees, as I had asked them to come with things already prepped. I almost had another person able to take over in the stead of the one who dropped, but they couldn’t make it to campus in time for us to get useful footage.
As for setting up, Jeff from ACM was the best as he showed my friends and I everything that needed to be done. Also, Lauren from our class was a help with showing us where to go and answering my questions over and over again haha, so thank you very much to them. Going back to Jeff, due to his patience the setup for our production was awesome. We had a lot of issues with the sound cutting in and out once we actually began filming though we got that solved ASAP.
Now, for the actual discussion part, my interviewees were amazing. Jalen and Professor Sam killed it, and Sophie, who agreed to join only hours before, was amazing. Aubrey, my friend behind the camera, also came through controlling 3 separate cameras along with listening to our sound to make sure we were okay. Things still cut out through the filming but she got that patched in a couple of seconds each time. I do wish that people hadn’t kept coming in and out of the room, though, as my interviewees confessed afterward it distracted them, and the door is also heard on the sound, but at least that’s the least of our issues.
Either way, I think that filming went well considering I was even able to do it. I’m grateful to have the friends and support system I do to have gotten this done. I had wanted to do a vlog to show you all my prep for that day but my entire plan got shot down due to unforeseen circumstances, but because of my support system I still was able to get things done.
Below are some images from the set we did so you guys can all see how it turned out, and how it compares to my inspo! Anyway, I'll be posting another update in a few days about the transition from production to post, so I'll see you guys then. You should all be seeing footage by the end of this week too, so yay!
Best of luck to everyone else for these coming weeks. Almost there!! I know it's stressful but it's not as bad as it seems, really. Also, feel free to reach out to me if you need help or anything, I'm always down to support :)