The Daily Background

Yesterday I shot a little more boring b-roll footage for the documentary and then I went into the basement of the building I was in, and inspected the are where I will be doing the majority (all?) of the interviews with my subject.

It’s a pretty neat classroom theater which is arranged in sort of a semi-circle pattern. There are a few rows of chairs connected to these curved tables, which descend into sort of a pit where the lecturer would speak if a class was held in it, where there are several blackboards.

One of the really cool things about the lighting in this area is fairly easy use of the various different types of ceiling lights in the room, which I was able to configure to my liking. I plan to conduct the interview itself (which will take place over several days) in the “pit” with the subject in front of the blackboards (although maybe it’d be cooler to have the rows of chairs behind him instead?). But I’ll also do a bunch of shots that show more of the space itself, to break things up a bit.

One of the challenges that I’m considering is that the bulk of the footage that’s going to come out of this is really just the interview. It’s basically going to be this person talking about various things (more on this later), which would be pretty boring to sit through. So while that’s going to be the central thing, I’m going to break things up with showing b-roll over some of the interview parts, breaking up the interview with shots showing more of the space, and some photographs which are topical to what the subject is talking about.

I’ll also break it up with segments of the subject talking about various things in other locations. Yeah, all of this is subject to change and develop of course, but this is how I see things shaping up right now. And it feels kind of loose, but it’ll tighten up as I film more, I’m sure. I don’t know exactly what’s going to come out in the interviews yet, and that’ll shape things quite a bit.

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For more about the documentary, you can check out the archives in this section.

Filed under: Documentary, Z-TDB Blog