Interviewing and filming candidates for the Student’s Union elections and creating a professional lower third for the video was a challenging task. I enjoyed the initial interview and felt it touched upon my skills as a journalist, allowing speak to people and enabling them to share the interesting things about themselves (Harcup 2015). I noticed our candidate seemed anxious about the interview, so I used the soft skills I have learned from previous experiences to try to put her at ease, to ensure she felt relaxed and therefore able to give the impression that she hoped to. I felt comfortable interviewing out candidate, however in future I would prepare additional questions; I have learned from subsequent interviews that it is beneficial to have more questions prepared than you anticipate needing, as one cannot predict the course of an interview and it may become apparent that some questions are not longer useful or appropriate. We asked the interviewee to sit against a white background and used the popular three-point lighting technique that involves a key light, to illuminate the subject, a back light, to distinguish the subject from the background, and a fill light, which is used to manipulate the light and dark areas of the shot, creating interest shadows and eliminating unwanted ones (See figure 1). This technique is used as a standard among filmmakers as it is an effective and simple way of creating a professional-looking scene. However, when it came to editing the footage, I noticed that the lighting set up did not look how I had anticipated. It was much more dull and grey-looking than I had expected. This has taught me that in future I must take test footage and review it before I commit to filming under poor lighting. I found editing the footage slightly challenging at first, but I soon became used to using the editing software. However, I would have liked to be able to use additional skills that I now possess but did not at the time, for example colour grading; I may have been able to improve the appearance of the final product using colour grading software. I added subtitles to the footage which was the first time I had done so, so I felt positive about having learnt a new skill. I also felt that this will be a useful skill in future when creating video and mobile journalism, as it is vital to make a piece as accessible to everyone as is possible. When doing this task, I learned that in future if I am creating similar work that I need to give myself plenty of time to complete it; transcribing interviews and adding subtitles seem less important than other aspects of the editing process at first glance, however they can be very time consuming, yet must also be done accurately.
Figure 1, available from http://www.hotelsrate.org/three-point-lighting-system/