For once: close the books and work on the field!

As many of you may know, books can give you lots of information, but they are not helpful at all when it comes to practical experience. This is the reason why I decided to apply to the YMCA Video Internship this year and actually be on the field saying: lights, camera, ACTION! And this happened right this week! 

During the past few days I went to the YMCA office and brainstormed to decide how to create the YMCA annual campaign for fundraising and donations. It took me a little while to find the perfect way to promote such a big campaing! However, this week I finally had the opportunity to actually bring to life my ideas! As soon as I arrived to the office, my supervisor, Nathan, went to grab all the film equipment, and we set up everything to interview Jaan, the Noah’s Anchorage Crisis Youth Shelter coordinator (I told you about this YMCA branch in this previous post). 

Cool set.. Nathan ready to roll!!

It was my first time handling such professional (and expensive) equipment!!! We set up the lights to perfectly frame Jaan face, we grabbed the interview chair and the tripod and we were almost ready to go!! In fact, it is never easy to position the lights, camera and interview chair… We moved the chair, camera and lights more then a thousand times before being completely satisfied with the shot composition. We used Tina, one of the YMCA employee, as our “model”, and we kept her there until Jaan came in order to lead the shot composition to perfection. Yes… movie making seems easy but it is not!!! There are so many things to take in consideration in order to create something professional!

Jaan really confused by my questions...

The challenges are not limited to the set up!! As soon as Jaan arrived we had to take care of the way he was delivering the interview… Yes, even if you are not the one talking, you have to be able to extrapolate the from the interview the information you want to deliver in the video. I had to find the perfect questions to ask in order to have him say what I wanted in order to make the video more effective! So cool, though!!!! It was amaziiiing!!!!