Back Up Promotional Video and Interview Techniques

Back Up Idea
During my conversations with mr hickey, he informed me that it may not be pssible for me to film at st thomas more. with this in mind, i needed a back up promotional video idea if st thomas was not able to accomidate me. as this was the case i had to change to another promotional video idea.

Luckily, i was working on an outside project with art alert to promote the coop hall in nuneaton. as they wanted children and young adults to be involved in the production and final product of the coop hall archiving they were more than happy for me to make a promotion video for the coop hall.

Mike Dabrowski is the main client that i am dealing with, with regards to the look and feel of the promotion video. my other clients are Joanne Lole and Corine Davies. at the first meeting Mike and Joanne were present and this meeting consist of introducing us to the Art Alert and the Coop Hall Project.

Mick provided us with a criterior list of what our aims and objectives were. These were:
                        - Video shots on Canon DSLR with prime lenses
                        - Audio recordings
                        - Use photos provided by interviewees in film montage
                        - Edit the footage provided by him and self recorded footage together into a promotion                .                         video.
                        - Collect own images reflecting the fashion, music and celebrities of the times
                        - Script and voice a narration to underpin the final film (optional)
                        - Shot and edit further interviews.
                        - Develop the website
                     
The second meeting with Mick and Corine was recorded with a zoom H4N microphone. From this second meeting Mick and Corine gave a more in depth and specific explanation of what they want from the promotional video.



Interview Techniques 
When it comes to interviewing, particularly people who are not used to being on camera, it i vital that you are prepared  before i interviews Joanne and Corine i made sure that i had all the questions written down that i wanted to ask and made a note of any additional information that i needed of camera. (See Art Alert Interview - Footage review post for question list).

Think of the person you are interviewing. this is specially important when interviewing older people. i need to take into consideration that they may be hard of hearing and for this reason i will need to ask the question slowly clearly and loudly.

Don't ask question that have simple yes or no answer. encourage the interviewee to expand on their point, adding opinions/feelings. for example don't just ask "did you go to the coop hall", instead ask "what do you remember about the coop hall". you could even merge to questions together, this will bulk out their response and give you a lot of information and in my case footage, to work with.

Another interview techniques, especially when it comes to editing the footage together in a montage, is to ask the interviewee to repeat the beginning of the question when answering, i.e. "i remember the balcony in the coop hall". this will help when in comes to editing the footage together and will allow the audience to know what topic is being referred to, and not just a clip of somebody saying "the balcony".

                    Here the question asked was "What age did you first go to the Coop Hall?"

Take One                                                                            Take Two 
                      

Mick informed me that when i am interviewing i obviously don't want to be heard on camera. However by not encouraging the interviewee with back-channel features, the interviewee and become uncomfortable and think that what they are saying is not interesting. to overcome this problem before interviewing the interviewee needs to be informed that you don't want to be heard on camera, so if they were telling a joke, for instance, and you do not laugh, it is not because it it not funny, its simply because you don't want t interrupt their interview. you are able to nod along and smile, just let the know that this is what you will be doing, an reassure them at the end of each clip or question, before you move onto the next, that what  they have said i great, interesting and very informative; this will help to ease any tension. also a good thing to do it to thank them and reassure them at the end of the interview. 

                                                

The best interviews are the statics ones, with camera on a tripod. this is what mick wanted mainly because the rest of the interviews he has done are all static, also because they are simple and don't have to much going on, therefore focusing on the interviewee and what they are saying.

At the Coop Hall new years eve 1964, there was an accident on the stairwell in the hall. Mick said that he doesn't want this to be emphasised too much or the main focus, as the video is to archive the happy memories of the Coop Hall, so the promotional video should reflect this.

Finally Mick said that slow motion would help to emphasis the sadness of the Coop Hall demolition, making it more emotional. Also he said that he is happy for me to use clips from the internet that captured the demolition, as he himself does not have any recording of this.