Week Six Documentary Progress Update

This week we filmed our first interview with Ben the singer songwriter. We were supposed to film a second interview with Hannah from the female folk band, but she had to reschedule due to having the flu. We plan to still finish the first round of film interviews before spring break, so we will not be behind schedule.

The interview with Ben went unbelievably well. He was incredibly easy to work with. He had a lot of experience with interviews, and worked with us to help the process run smoothly. He offered to unplug his refrigerator, turn off the AC, and even change his shirt if he needed to. The content of the interview was also great. He more or less stayed on topic the whole time and gave us a lot of material to work with. He primarily writes instrumental pieces without lyrics, so he talked more about the emotions behind songwriting than the memories. I am really excited to see how it will tie in with the other interviews. The only negative aspect to the interview was that Ben was wearing glasses and the light kept getting caught in his glasses. In retrospect I should have told him to take off the glasses because now I will have to try and fix it in post production.

Week Four Documentary Progess Update

This week we made a lot of progress with the documentary. We have begun to move onto production and filmed Signal Fire's live show at Ziggy's By The Sea on Saturday, February 7th. We filmed the live show on an HD camera set up with a tripod and a GoPro. We recorded sound by hooking up an H4n to the FOH audio through an XLR cable. We plan to interview Sean the singer songwriter for the band during the last weekend of February. We will then schedule a followup interview with him in March. Sean and his band were incredibly friendly and welcoming to the crew. I look forward to working with them this semester.

Jonathan and I also attended a show on Sunday, February 8th where we met Stray Local. They were also incredibly friendly and enthusiastic about the documentary. This has really put me at ease about interviewing them in the upcoming weeks. For Stray Local we are going to take more of a group interview approach because they collaborate more as a band to write their songs. We plan on doing the first interview with them Tuesday, February 17th.

We are still working on locking down our other two experts for the documentary, but have people in mind and are looking to solidify them in the next two weeks.