Filming

Hello again!

The last two weeks that I had in Whitehorse were mostly interviewing and hanging out at the Beez Kneez. I’ll tell you some stories, and then we’ll get into the technical stuff when we delve into the interviews.

Sobriety Put to the Test

I did end up having my sobriety tested a few times while I was up in Whitehorse. The first time was at the Beez Kneez’s 18th birthday party. Everyone around me was drinking for the party and the night ended with a drinking game called “Never Have I Ever”. I knew I wouldn’t cave to pressure, but the cravings were reeeal. I drank a Cola which I pretended was beer for the game and laughed with the others like nothing was wrong. I will say though, I was relieved when a tall German man walked through the door and said he wasn’t drinking. His name was Kai, and he said he was in recovery. I said, “Me too! Wait… I think we mean a different kind of recovery!” Yeah… he meant he was recovering from a strenuous bike ride! haha

The second time was when one of the guests at the Beez Kneez was insistent on pressuring me to go to the pub with him and wasn’t taking “no” for an answer. The other people staying there were not having it though and had me sit behind them to drive the point home to him that I was not going to join him in shenanigans.

The third time was mostly peer-driven and was a little harder to resist because I wanted to go to the bar suddenly and started thinking I could make that leap to hang out with a friend. That didn’t end up happening thankfully, and after that, I ended up just putting my head down and getting to work.

It was hard, but I am thankful I made it out of the Yukon sober. Which anyone from there can tell you is an amazing feat in itself.

The Interviews

The first adventure was the Gathering. We asked as many people as possible to show up to interview them. Since there were other people there, it was fairly noisy and I was worried about audio. At one point I heard an ATV in the audio and was so mad that I couldn’t figure out a way to get rid of it. What would have been a way better option, was that, since it was established in the film that there was action going on around the camp, I could have got more b-roll of the action. If I had incorporated the ATV in at the beginning, then it would make sense that it was in the audio later.

The next interview of significance was with Chief Doris Bill, who used to be in journalism. Since she had some wisdom to share, the Chief told us to always check our audio before we left because she had been in a situation where she took the interview back to work and the audio didn’t work! On that note, it was also suggested by Lance at Shakat that you should have two audio sources going during interviews in case one fails.

While I was staying at the Beez Kneez, there was a travelling biker who I like to call “Papa Jim”. Papa Jim was a photographer and videographer among many other things, and he mentored me for part of the project. One thing he taught me, was that if someone is playing with their hands, to stop the interview and let them know that it’s distracting in the audio. I took that advice, but modified it a bit and let interviewees know before we began which I think really helped.

One thing I noticed during editing that I could have done so much better at was the backgrounds. I thought that I had nice setups, but honestly, I could have done better and I think how I could have gone about that was just taking the time to check the monitor. Since the screen is so small, it’s imperative to take one’s time with it and make sure the background is right. When I interned at Shaw, it always took them 1-2 hours to set up something super professional, so I should also be prepared to put in that kind of work too. Shaw taught me to let the interviewee know ahead of time that it can take a long time to set up so that they are prepared to wait a while before being interviewed.

Helpful Tips

Some other helpful tips I think a new videographer could use are:

• Make sure your interviewee has water. This way they are comfortable and their voices are clear in the video.
• Don’t be afraid to take charge. If you see that the microphone looks uncomfortable on your subject, fix it!
• Try not to film where the light is constantly changing (by a window). If you have to make edits such as jump cuts, the lighting will change from word to word and it will be the bane of your existence.
• Look up three-point lighting. I thought it was intimidating by the way Shaw does it, but it’s not as hard as I was making it out to be.
• Give the interviewees the questions ahead of time. This will give them time to think about their answers, which will make them more comfortable and give you the best sound bites!
• If you are doing standup, write a script beforehand and practice it. It will make you less nervous and will keep you on the subject.

Until Next Time

This video was so close to my heart, I was passionate about it and I put in so much work to produce something I could be proud of. However, I think if I were to do it again, I would scale back on the size of the project.

In the end, the project did take a toll on my mental health, which plummeted me into a depression and affected the way I handled the editing. I was trying to get a hold of mental health services to no avail and luckily I made it out sober, but I could have taken much better care of myself.

My professor Collette Jones taught her class that we’re so focused on deadlines and doing well, that we need to remember to take care of our minds and our spirits. So if you take anything away from this blog, it would be to take care of yourself because you will create better content if your heart is content.