Our forth day shooting was the interview with Ajay in Peters field. This was a long journey but George was kind enough to offer us all a lift. We all attended this day and it was very important that we did because otherwise it would be very hard for me to direct and present as well as having to help with all three cameras that we had set up.
I have to be honest this is the first time I have ever interviewed someone and Ajay was really kind and friendly meaning it eased m nerves basically as soon as we had walked in the door. Ajay is a friend of George's dad so it was a good contact to have because he is a massive electric car enthusiast and has owned and driven a lot of the newest models as well.
As I was presenting I physically could not contribute like I had done on the previous days. This meant the others had to do the work of four people in three and they did a good job at it. Andrew, George and Cailan all had a camera each and all had equal responsibilities to make sure there shot was right, as nobody else could be blamed for it. Even though I was presenting I did want to know what the shots looked like and give my input, we worked well as a team to get all three shots looking good and I was happy with them as I started the interview.
I do feel that we where under time constraints in a few areas once again so i wanted to make sue I did a good job as quickly as possible. I was happy to stay as late as possible to get the rights shots but luckily not many takes where needed.
As we did not have a chance to recce the location as it was changed from his office to his house at the last minute we too the advise from th lectures to scout out the house with Ajay's permission of course. We came to the conclusion after looking in the kitchen, living room and the driveway that his garden would be the best choice for lighting, access and also sound. The driveway next to his car would have looked very nice with a great backdrop but the sound of the road was too much. The kitchen and living room where nice but the LED lights meant that we had a strobe affect on the cameras. initially the guys said we may have to take the risk and film in there but I wanted to look at the other locations to see if we could get a better one and we did. While the garden still did have slight road noise it was more ambience than in your face. Lighting was good and set design was nice after Ajay brought out some wine and glasses to make it look a little more interesting. It was also a nice backdrop as well I would say it felt "rustic", which is a feel we have been going for the whole way though in b - roll terms at least.
We did have an issue with sound though as we only had one clip mic and the boom arm was left at Georges house, so we had to improvise. I suggested we stick the mic between us and the wine bottle was the perfect object to stick it too, while it was not incredibly professional the audio quality was great and you could not notice it on camera. I think this was a great improvisation and it actually produced much better audio than expected.
As I had not written the words that I was going to say in this interview I did struggle at the beginning. However after a few takes I got into the flow and I got some good takes in. I did feel George pressuring me a little which led me to say "You do it then" which then meant he took a step back as he was putting too much pressure on me to be perfect first time.
After I had adjusted the script to be more natural and more in the way I would say certain things it started to flow well and as soon as we got into the interview it went super-smooth as I can bounce of Ajay much more naturally than forced peices to camera. We did three full good run through's of the script and each time it got shorter which was important as we had only around 3 minutes for the interview part. The team let me know not to ask any other questions as I was getting a little carried away and it meant the interview went on for too long.I felt that after each take it went better and better. i got more confident and also i had learned the lines more so it all started to come a little more natural. The team were happy with the takes and we could even cut between takes even if it a "live" piece we may be able to splice something together with all the best parts! (don't tell anyone!)
Most importantly though we came out with a great interview, it settled my nerves as I will be completing some more interviews soon for a personal project and this was a great start so I thank all the team for there help, it really has helped me take my first steps in interviewing. I think we got on well as a team today we all contributed and we got the shots we wanted even if we did have a slightly different opinions.
After the interview we got some great shots of Ajays car. We really appreciate ajay for letting us do this because this may be the only time in our show we have an electric car moving and the silence that it brings with it. George and I got this B Roll while the others packed up but in all it was a fantastic day and I think we can all be very happy with how it went.
George also kept up with the behind the scenes shots for our vlog. It's a great way to show what has been happening and how we got to set up our shots. It will hopefully be something else to show the extra extent we have went to along with both social media accounts as well as all of the b-roll.I will miss the last shoot of this week as I am travelling to Germany to follow up a contact I made earlier on in this project which I wanted to follow up personally. I was not needed for this day anyway and I think it is fair to say I have poured everything into this project and i fully believe the rest of the guys can do a god job tomorrow with the news anchor work.
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