Why I wish teleportation was real

Saturday

Mission objective was to go film Lola at Ignite Your Mic an Organ Donation Awareness event being held in Fort Lauderdale where young poets were given the opportunity to compete for a scholarship in a themed poetry slam. However, there was a huge mix-up between my groupmates over time: we thought the event started at 7 when it really started at 5. This caused an unfortunate chain of events, rushing us out of the suburbs and into the city. We had no idea when the event was going to end or if we already missed Lola's last performance but we did whatever it took to get there (shoutout to my dad's insane driving skills). Luckily, we got there and the event was finishing up still which allowed me to get some b-roll shots of poets and of Lola. Maybe if we teleported there, we would have made it in time, but luckily there was still Lola's Mom's Phone footage we could use.

Sunday

Sunday was more smooth, except for Juan waking up with a horrible fever and not being in the best condition to join us. But being lucky that Ghost was in town this weekend for a family event, we met up with them at M's house, found an "arty" spot to sit them in and began shooting the interview. What I didn't expect was 1) how far off the questions I was going to go: my interviewer alter ego came over me and I just kept pullling more and more content out from Ghost and 2) the audio box and lavalier to run out of battery 3 minutes into the 20 minute interview without anyone noticing it died. It wasn't until we finished the interview that we realized anything was wrong, but at that point, we didn't want to redo the whole interview knowing it would lose the authenticity of our first attempt. 

Then without skipping a beat, we filmed Ghost's b-roll, getting a mixture of wide, medium, and close ups and incorporating subtle movements with the items they brought to show off. We experimented with filming a couple shots outside for variety, but didn't quite like how they turned out, which is why most of that footage was not included in our final documentary. However, it was definitely useful to overshoot with any idea we had because in the edit we didn't feel like we were clawing for more footage, we had just the right amount.

Monday

Monday was definitely my favorite shooting day, mostly because Lola and I get along great, but also because the interview and b-roll was bountiful. My camera felt like a cournucopia on thanksgiving, that's how full I felt. The set up was a little tricky because our lens needed to sit far awar from the subject in order to yield the best depth of field (a little bit shallow) so as the interviewer next to the camera, I had to wall squat in the corner of Lola's bedroom for about 20 minutes while she answered questions. Completely worth it though because it looked beautiful.

The shot in question.

Then for b-roll, I was able to film all the pictures and knick knacks on her walls (dogs tags she won at poetry competitions) but we really hit the jackpot when she pulled out a memory box from her closet, containing flyers and journals with photos and writing galore. It was perfect and it set us on the right track to continue our project.