Production

Think on the spot!

        One thing that video production has taught me is that you have to adapt and overcome any obstacles thrown at you. We ended up having to change one of our subjects which pushed our schedule back by a bit. In total, we had 4 (non-consecutive) filming days, here's how they went.

DAY 1, 11/16:

        Last post I mentioned how we had written a short VO on the history of DJing, well before we got too far in the script, we did the first interview with Jordan Sanchez, a DJ instructor from Wired Sound Academy. This could not have gone better. He gave full and thorough answers, it was almost as if he had read our outline and said exactly what we wanted to include. I didn't even ask about the history of DJing and he started talking about it. For that reason, we felt it would be better to get rid of our voice-over and continue with interview clips of the DJs explaining where it originated from.

DAY 2, 11/19:

        I had set up an interview on this date days prior, but of course, some things just escape from our control, and the DJ we were supposed to interview canceled on us last minute. Nevertheless, we adapted, and as much as I didn't want to originally, my dad is a DJ so it was an efficient way to get that interview. My biggest concern is that my dad has an accent so some of the answers could get lost in translation. This made us go back and rethink whether we wanted to have direct or indirect interviews, and if we should implement VO. it became an option for us and we kept it in mind during the interview, but we also didn't want to give up on our original vision with indirect interviews like in "Abstract" or "Exit Through the Gift Shop" (visit my Pre-PRE Production Blog to hear more about those). Thankfully, the interview went pretty well and we were able to get a lot of content about the topics we highlighted in our outline. 

DAY 3, 11/21:

        This might have been the most spontaneous day. Miami day! In the afternoon we went to Miami but we kind of forgot daylight savings was a thing so it got dark very quickly. This wasn't such a terrible thing because Miami is still a very lively place at night so we were able to get lots of footage. There was a DJ who we spoke to and got footage of too, a choice that could have been executed better if we had known the response from the audience. After some time we felt between the both of us, we had more than enough footage and there was now only one day left of filming.

DAY 4, 11/22:

        The last day of filming was with Alvaro, the young DJ. By this point, I had already started on the line edit and knew what elements we were missing, so the interview was expected to go smoothly. However, Alvaro is our friend so there was a lot of joking around and re-doing answers so it took a bit longer than expected. It was worth it because we got the best answers from him but it certainly wasn't easy. The most important part we wanted from him was B-roll. We basically set up a studio in my garage with colored lights and a DJ set. IT LOOKED AMAZING. It was exactly what I had envisioned for the piece and even though we were dying because of how hot it was in my garage, it was worth it because of how cool the footage turned out. This day was when we actually started seeing the project coming together and our vision coming to life.

        Throughout these days I had begun the editing process (aka my favorite part), but you'll hear more about that in my next post.