Production Process

A couple days before production, our teammate Mya had to rent out equipment from the local news station, BECON TV. The equipment consisted of

• 2 Sony Cameras
• 1 Tripod
• A lav mic
• A shotgun mic
• A Camera Handheld Stabilizer
• A light kit

Shoutout to them for being so generous to lend us all of these things. On production day, since it was my grandma's house, I helped her gather all of her photo albums and books. We went through many together and chose the best ones since the main attention wasn't the B-roll, it is her. I also set up the house to my grandmothers liking, also to include elements she wanted to represent.

I then sent my address to my teammates, and they drove over. Once they arrived, I helped them get all the equipment out of the car, as it was a hefty amount. We then got to my grandmother's home and got to set up the equipment. In the beginning, we used everything except the light kit. We used 2 Sony cameras to get our interviewee's speaking from a variety of shots, angles, and perspectives. Overall, the set-up process was awfully quick, and everything went pretty smoothly. The next thing we did was prepare our interviewees which was also pretty easy since all we had to do was attach a mic to their clothes. We also had to tell them were to sit to be interviewed. 

Everyone in the group had different roles. Mya Wolf was mainly responsible for the borrowed equipment and the usage of one of the cameras. She positioned and recorded the film through one of the Sony cameras. The person that recorded through the other camera was Yoav. He also heeded a lot of his attention towards the audio. Also related to audio, Miguel Cabrerra had a vital task for the production or the documentary. My grandmother spoke mostly in Spanish because it is the language, she felt more expressive in. Since this is the case, we had to translate what my grandmother said into English. This meant Miguel had to take notes on what she was saying because many things said in Spanish when translated into English could be incorrect. As for my position, I was the interviewer. I wasn't heard in the documentary, as we chose to use the indirect interview method. In the practice of indirect interviews, you cannot hear the interviewer asking the questions, instead, you hear the interviewee usually restating the question, followed by a complex response. We did this to get more thorough details about her expeditions. The reason I was the interviewer, is because I was the person closest to her. This increases her comfort level drastically and allows her to be more fluid with her answers, as she's told me the story various times.

Once we were a bit more than halfway done, more additions were added to our roles. Miguel and I had to prepare the b-roll footage and begin to film them, as Mya and Yoav took care of the newly incorporated light kit. This was the segment that Susana mostly showed and described events within the b-roll. Miguel and I also found correlations between elements with the house with what Susana was saying. For instance, because she said she always loved Budapest for its architecture, we decided to use shots of the statues and architectural paintings displayed throughout her home. Another example is when Susana spoke about food scarcity, we used b-roll of food around ger home. This was done to make the b-roll more connected and personal, rather than just visually pleasing.

Overall, the production went very well with no errors only fluidity. We were very happy with our about 2-3 hours of the whole process and could not wait to further work on the production.