As Live Production | VT Shoot: DIY / Etsy Interview

Today we were at a contributor's house, ready to interview her about selling her homemade clothing range on the internet.  We needed to shoot a short interview with her and film a demonstration of her making an item of clothing, as well as various GV and cutaway shots for the entire VT.

The crew for this shoot was more or less the same as the previous one, except George Nicholls has now operating a second camera, and Laura Dagga had joined us as a production assistant.  I also helped with the camera and directed some of the shots, as we all did.

Unlike the previous shoot, the entire VT contained diegetic sound (as it was an interview), so I was now using a boom pole with the Rode mic to ensure the audio quality was the best it could be.  We were using two Rode microphones as well as the internal camera mics - one was attached to the boom pole, while the other was mounted to the second camera.  This meant that we had three backup audio tracks to fall back on in case the main boom track failed for whatever reason.  Luckily it did not and the sound came out very clear.

The shoot only lasted a few hours and we were able to get plenty of cutaway shots as well as good coverage of the interview itself.

From this I have learned some valuable experience in working with contributors from shooting in a contributor's house.  Small things such as asking whether we should take off shoes and asking whether it is okay to move some things around works really well to build a good rapport and shoot the best interview we can at the same time.  I have also gained more experience in working with a boom pole, such as getting it as close to the subject as possible without getting in shot to get the clearest audio.