fun times

Hey readers and Patrick.

Today was a Filmie day. I shot the interviews for my documentary. If you don't know already, my documentary is about SIT student's study lives and their outside lives. In my opinion, I got some really awesome content that would make for a really awesome documentary, some of the stuff said was really ripping, as I hoped it would be. R.A.T.D, much...... Anyway. I am quite impressed and proud of myself for this afternoon, and very happy with my interviewees. As always, things went wrong, but as always, they got resolved in the end and it went smoothly. I always forget that on Thursdays, the gear room isn't open until 1pm, so instead of finishing my class at 12 and going straight to the gear room, I had to wait until 1. Which isn't all that bad, it gave me a chance to eat some lunch. I had to push back the schedule that my interviewees where coming in, but they didn't seem to mind. After I got all the gear I was issuing out, I lugged it all down to the photography studio. The first person I was going to interview was somewhat nervous to be in my documentary, but nonetheless, she really wanted to get her opinion on stuff out there. All of the interviewees in my documentary are silhouetted, it was Miss Head's idea, as she didn't really wanted to be able to be recognised. The rest of my interviewees were quite happy for the audience to know who they were (yes, I had more than two), but they rather liked the silhouette thing going on, and they wanted to be portrayed as that.

I've never used a silhouette set up before, much less seen one in action, and I've barely read anything on silhouetting (really only about 5 minutes worth on some website I found on google a few days ago). After a small while of playing around, I managed to pull of something that I'm really quite ecstatic with. From having just a guess to actually getting it right, I'm so happy with it!! I had two lights for this. I put a prolight sitting behind the subject, facing towards them, to give them a bit of a halo around their outline, and another light hitting the wall behind them, so they would pop out of the background. I thought about sticking a third light to hit the wall on the other side, but I rather liked the gradient that was going with the blue colour of the background, so I kept it as that. You may have noticed that I keep on referring to "I". Me. I had noone else to help me set up, apart from Anna who helped my lug everything to the studio, and put up stands for me. Of which I'm very grateful for. Anyway. After she left, I did everything else by myself. I asked my classmates beforehand if they were able, but literally they were all busy. Four of them had a class, one was working, and the other said he had to go do stuff for his own documentary. I didn't mind so much though, I really needed the experience with lighting, and sound is really easy to use. I have not used the Sony EX1s since the start of the year, so there was a few minutes of remembering how to use it, but it's pretty easy, after all it's a movie camera, and they all have pretty much the same features and how to use them. Sound levels. white balancing, exposure, yadda yadda yadda. The thing I found the hardest when I was using the camera was trying the headphone jack. It's in a really weird location. Anyway. I went to go hit record, but it wouldn't let me record. This is the second time that something's happened where I couldn't record. The first time was that some setting buried way deep in the menu had been changed. This time was there there was no card in the camera. What? There were no cards in the bag either. I ran up and found Chris (after shuffling into Patrick's 1st year class that some of my darling beloved 2nd year students are retaking are in, and freaking him out, asking if he's seen Chris and saying that there were no cards with the camera. Did you guys even get a full five minute break?). Chris gave me some cards. I don't really know if I'm supposed to ask for cards when issuing that camera, or he simply forgot to put them in. It doesn't really matter anyway, everyone makes mistakes. Ran back down, and started recording my interviewees. They were really helpful, and I even scored an extra interview, simply because Dan had turned up and seemed interested in answering the questions I had. I wasn't going to say no if he wanted to be interviewed. Some of the things he said were really great in regards to my topic, and hopefully I can use some of his interview. (If Patrick lets me. Because I know he said no classmates. But what he said is bang on for what I wanted in regards to interviewees answers. The other two weren't classmates though). It was a really great afternoon, with some awesome lighting going on. I had too much fun, mostly over the content I was capturing, and how everyone looked secretive and badass. After everyone left I was really silly and wanted to have a new profile picture, so I pressed record and filmed myself doing weird hand shapes in the camera and stuff, haha. Hey now, you gotta have a little silly fun every now and then :)

So yes, I had my fun then got serious again. Inventoried everything I got out, and noticed I was missing the cards. Oh dear!! I found them in the end, in the camera bag... I must have zipped them up in there without realising. Anyway. I must go now, fellow human beings. Enjoy yourselves.