Interview Practise - Sound Part 1 | Workshop

We had a sound workshop recently and within this sound workshop we were given a recap on what we already knew about the sound, but we were also given new information to help us with the sound of our documentary. 

• We were told about the multiple use of a clip mic and a boom mic, and we were given instructions and advice on how to make the most out of our sound and what settings they should be on. 

• We split into groups of 4 and we were given the task to ask someone questions and film a short documentary on them. We started by giving everyone roles in our group; I was the interviewee, Ellie was the interviewer, Nisserin was the camera lady, and Ellen was the sound person. 
• I was asked some questions about university and my personal life outside of university but Ellie, and the others did their jobs by making sure the sound sounded good, and the camera framing was good.

• From Fergus, we were told that we shouldn't be afraid to getting in to close with the boom mic. The clip that was on my scarf was a nice sound element, but we should have a back up sound on the footage just in case. 
• Ellen was given the advice to get as close as possible to me with the boom mic and Nisserin would tell her how far to move so she was out of shot. This taught me how to make the most out of the sound, and why it's so important to be close to the person on the screen.

• As well as single shooting, we decided to start double shooting with two people in the frame; myself and Ellen. We were then asked questions by Ellie about our friendship and how we met at university. 
• Through this experimentation, we all learnt that it's very hard to shoot actuality of two people because it's spontaneous. You need to decide who you are going to focus on with what question, and what shot size you will have it on, but this needs to be decided on the spot, which is quite a hard decision to make.

• Afterwards, we watched all of the clips as a class and discussed the good things about it and the bad. We were told that our framing was really nice, and there were some nice transitions between different shots.