Project: Jenny B. Update 03
Project: Jenny B. Update 03
On Wednesday I shot a very important part of my documentary about Jenny Brown. The day was one that I had been looking forward to for some while. On the schedule that night was an interview that I set up with Jenny's family. What I did was schedule with Jenny a night that she could have her family over for dinner. I wanted to film the family dinner and use the footage to take on the roll of the interviews that I wanted with her family. This process, being a little different from the normal interview process that I have become so accustomed to, proved to be a little challenging yet in the end successful. Here was the set up:
Jenny eating with 4 other family members: her mother, her sister, her sister's husband, and her sister's 1 year old child.
We filmed the dinner with 3 cameras placed around their circular dinner table.
Each camera was equipped with an AT Short Shotgun mic that we ductaped to the camera's handle (since we couldn't rent the clips to properly attach the mics haha). Along with those mics each camera also had a lav plugged into the second channel. 2 of the Lavs were wireless (Jenny's and her brother in law's) while the other two were wired. We put the wired ones on Jenny's mother and her sister who were sitting across form Jenny and her brother in law. It was frustrating having to wire two of them as opposed to using wireless lavs for everyone but it worked out ok. I was worried that the wires would make them feel stuck (since they couldn't be fully mobile while wired to the camera) and thus effect their natural behavior while at dinner with their family but it didn't seem to be that much of a bother.
The structure of the interview was as follows:
Jenny and family interviewed simultaneously while eating dinner together. I, as the director, guided their dinner conversation with questions and had them reply to both me and each other. I tried to encourage them to speak with each other like it was a normal old dinner with the family. We touched on topics like Apert Syndrome, Jenny's job, Jenny as a person, and Jenny's influence in their lives. All of this while relaxing and eating a wonderful salmon dinner that Jenny herself cooked.
As for crew: I had two other guys, Hawk the DP, and Bobby (another camera opp.) operating cameras besides myself and a good friend Marcos came to supervise the location sound and keep all of the mics in line and under control.
It turned out to be a very positive experience. I had originally wanted to interview each family member separately about Jenny but, after conducting many interviews this summer, especially on the Making of Baby Blues documentary, I fell in love with the idea of interviewing people with other people instead of just alone. There are benefits of interviewing people by themselves and that style has and will continue to benefit me on this documentary but I decided to interview her family in a different way. The idea of putting them all in the same room, Jenny with them, and providing them a familiar family environment (the dinner) and then just slightly guiding their dinner conversation while filming the whole thing would be awesome. This way they could feed ideas off of each other and use each other’s commentary to produce a very believable and compelling interview. In theory, this type of interview would be very natural and inviting. In truth, it was exactly that.
After the dinner Jenny let the crew eat the hefty left-overs! Everyone went home happy. I've only let a few people watch the tapes of the interviews and the critiques that I have gotten have been along the lines of "wow that is such a great interview idea... it's very inviting." I think people have a better time relating to and believing what people say when they are also watching how other people are reacting to the speaker ON SCREEN. It's just another way to draw the viewer's attention and give them a better chance to identify with what they are watching and hearing. Plus it really breaks free from the classic and sometimes boring "talking head" interview. The cutting together of a family dinner scene is much more like narrative story telling and will really help strengthen the structure of the documentary.
This film has been such an exciting learning process. I have been taking a few more chances than I usually would have with structure and content. So far so good. Two more small sequences to film and it's in the can. I'm taking a break from this project for a few weeks to rejoin my Pedaling for Change film crew. I'll pick back up with the Jenny B. project in late September. I plan to start post production for the Jenny B. project in mid-October.
I'll post video stills from the film in a few weeks after I get back to Savannah.
:)
On Wednesday I shot a very important part of my documentary about Jenny Brown. The day was one that I had been looking forward to for some while. On the schedule that night was an interview that I set up with Jenny's family. What I did was schedule with Jenny a night that she could have her family over for dinner. I wanted to film the family dinner and use the footage to take on the roll of the interviews that I wanted with her family. This process, being a little different from the normal interview process that I have become so accustomed to, proved to be a little challenging yet in the end successful. Here was the set up:
Jenny eating with 4 other family members: her mother, her sister, her sister's husband, and her sister's 1 year old child.
We filmed the dinner with 3 cameras placed around their circular dinner table.
Each camera was equipped with an AT Short Shotgun mic that we ductaped to the camera's handle (since we couldn't rent the clips to properly attach the mics haha). Along with those mics each camera also had a lav plugged into the second channel. 2 of the Lavs were wireless (Jenny's and her brother in law's) while the other two were wired. We put the wired ones on Jenny's mother and her sister who were sitting across form Jenny and her brother in law. It was frustrating having to wire two of them as opposed to using wireless lavs for everyone but it worked out ok. I was worried that the wires would make them feel stuck (since they couldn't be fully mobile while wired to the camera) and thus effect their natural behavior while at dinner with their family but it didn't seem to be that much of a bother.
The structure of the interview was as follows:
Jenny and family interviewed simultaneously while eating dinner together. I, as the director, guided their dinner conversation with questions and had them reply to both me and each other. I tried to encourage them to speak with each other like it was a normal old dinner with the family. We touched on topics like Apert Syndrome, Jenny's job, Jenny as a person, and Jenny's influence in their lives. All of this while relaxing and eating a wonderful salmon dinner that Jenny herself cooked.
As for crew: I had two other guys, Hawk the DP, and Bobby (another camera opp.) operating cameras besides myself and a good friend Marcos came to supervise the location sound and keep all of the mics in line and under control.
It turned out to be a very positive experience. I had originally wanted to interview each family member separately about Jenny but, after conducting many interviews this summer, especially on the Making of Baby Blues documentary, I fell in love with the idea of interviewing people with other people instead of just alone. There are benefits of interviewing people by themselves and that style has and will continue to benefit me on this documentary but I decided to interview her family in a different way. The idea of putting them all in the same room, Jenny with them, and providing them a familiar family environment (the dinner) and then just slightly guiding their dinner conversation while filming the whole thing would be awesome. This way they could feed ideas off of each other and use each other’s commentary to produce a very believable and compelling interview. In theory, this type of interview would be very natural and inviting. In truth, it was exactly that.
After the dinner Jenny let the crew eat the hefty left-overs! Everyone went home happy. I've only let a few people watch the tapes of the interviews and the critiques that I have gotten have been along the lines of "wow that is such a great interview idea... it's very inviting." I think people have a better time relating to and believing what people say when they are also watching how other people are reacting to the speaker ON SCREEN. It's just another way to draw the viewer's attention and give them a better chance to identify with what they are watching and hearing. Plus it really breaks free from the classic and sometimes boring "talking head" interview. The cutting together of a family dinner scene is much more like narrative story telling and will really help strengthen the structure of the documentary.
This film has been such an exciting learning process. I have been taking a few more chances than I usually would have with structure and content. So far so good. Two more small sequences to film and it's in the can. I'm taking a break from this project for a few weeks to rejoin my Pedaling for Change film crew. I'll pick back up with the Jenny B. project in late September. I plan to start post production for the Jenny B. project in mid-October.
I'll post video stills from the film in a few weeks after I get back to Savannah.
:)
posted by Chelsea at 9:47 PM
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