For this task I decided to obtain the reactions from the people of York about the Trump rallies that took place during the week commencing on January 30th 2017. I wanted to find out how effective people thought the rallies were in stopping Trump from visiting England and their general thoughts on him.
To carry out the interviews I used a Canon 70D DSLR which proved to be very effective as the camera is easy to use and the footage captured is of a high quality. When filming, I asked my interviewees to look at me or my partner depending who was asking the question whilst standing to the side of the camera so that I could achieve a cross shot angle. Working collaboratively proved to be extremely helpful as both of us had the chance to interview people and also become comfortable using all the equipment provided. In terms of capturing audio I used a Tascam DR100 and a DR60D mixing recorder keeping the decibel level between -12 and -18 in order to maximise the clarity of speech. When recording the interviews there were a few minor problems along the way, for example, some audio was lost as the Tascam was not connected properly to the camera, however we quickly realised this and fixed the problem ensuring it didn’t happen in any other interviews. I then also did regular checks to ensure everything was in the correct place and did thorough sound checks before interviewing. In addition to this, there was a large amount of background noise as we were in the centre of York for some interviews however the noise picked up from buskers gave the audio a nice undertone of city vibes.
When editing my video I tried to show the variation of opinions from the interviews which fell into two categories, these were people supporting the rallies and people who didn’t think they were as effective. I portrayed the difference clearly by having a 4 second shot panning across a street to demonstrate the switch of opinions. I also had 6 seconds worth of establishing shots to set the scene of York to convey the location to the audience. In addition to this, I included a graphic which was made on Adobe After Effects to give the video a sense of professionalism. Before any of the production began I filled in a risk assessment form outlining any hazards we may be faced with and made sure that everything we were going to followed health and safety guidelines. These included such things as confined spaces as we had to make sure that equipment was properly set up and not blocking any paths on narrow streets we filmed on such as The Shambles. To add to this, we made sure any unused equipment and bags were in sight at all-time preventing anything being stolen or the public tripping over them.
If I was to carry out this task there a few things I would like to do differently. Despite getting a lot of responses, It took a while to get started as we would only ask particular people who we thought may answer. However when in full swing, my confidence grew and I could approach everyone.