Despite all the challenges of the interview assignment, I had a lot of fun with it. Since Sarah lives on campus, it was really easy for us to find a first year student that we didn't know just by Sarah putting the word out through people she did know.
That was the end of the easy.
Finding a location on campus to film was somewhat difficult. We wanted it to look pleasing but also be relatively quiet. Once we agreed on a location, we had to figure out which angle was the best to provide depth in the background as well as the best quality of light on our subject. It was tricky to find the right place where she wouldn't be blinded by the sunlight and squinty and didn't have a bunch of tree branch shadows all over her face. When we found this angle, setting up the camera and the shot was a lot of fun. I recall saying, "wow, this is really a lot of fun!"
Our interviewee was positioned in as perfect of light as we were going to get, the shot was set up, the sound was ready to go, we were ready to start filming and--THESE DANG PLANES KEPT FLYING OVER US CONSTANTLY!!! seriously, every time one would pass, we'd hear another one in the distance approaching. During the quietest moments of that, someone would walk by on a bunch of leaves or a car would drive by or a group of people would stop and linger on in conversation. We finally began our first take and about halfway through, this group of people off in the distance began laughing super hard to the point where it caused our interviewee to start laughing so we had to do the take all over again. Again, we had to wait a long time before we found a quiet enough moment. (I believe this was where I recall saying, "okay, this isn't fun anymore!"
We finally, got through the interview as a plane was beginning to fly over again. We considered that as much of a success as we were probably going to get short of leaving town and shut the production down. I feel like our subject was an all right choice but I felt a little lacking in the depth of the interview. We didn't ask her any really profound questions or anything but I kept wishing that she would be more detailed in her responses. I found myself trying to get more out of her but she just wouldn't give it to me. Next time, I think I will tell my interviewee to please be as detailed as possible on all questions before we start rolling the camera, though it may be more of an age issue. I also didn't like my voice being in the shot. If I could avoid that in some way, I would prefer it.
