Wednesday 21st November was the first big filming day.
It was a difficult day all round, mainly due to the horrendous weather and various flooded roads; to suggest we almost had to swim down to Wells is nothing short of hyperbolic. It's safe to say we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was clear we had survived the initial journey.
The purpose of this particular session was to test the equipment and work out how the filming process would take place, focusing on camera angles etc. Taras agreed to be our guinea pig and this worked out nicely.
We had poor Taras constantly moving left, then right, then left again and then a little more to the right. However, he was very patient with us. The questions we asked him were also very simple and were based around his experience working at the Palace in general:
- What is your main role and how long have you worked at the Palace?
- Tell us about your favourite parts of your day.
- What attracted you to work for the Palace in the first place?
- How easy was the application process?
- What has the Palace done for you?
- How vital is the role of history within your volunteer post?
All these questions had been emailed to him previously so his answers were very good. It became apparent very quickly that he was nervous in front of the camera and the more takes we did, the more relaxed he became.
Wednesday November 28th was feedback day. We met with Anneli to discuss how the filming went - problems and surprises.
Our first big issue was the quality of the film - the picture that came out was very blurry and fuzzy so we may have to speak to Bobby about finding a replacement. The sound also appeared to be out of sync at various points which is a big problem.
It also became apparent that we will need to meet with the interviewees before the filming rather than merely emailing them beforehand so we can discuss their roles a little and how the filming process will work. This was a result from Taras getting a little confused over the purpose of the filming the week before.
Taras has two important volunteer roles within the Palace and during the interview he kept swapping and changing between the two so by meeting with him beforehand, he would have understood that we wanted him to talk purely on the Learner Mentor Role even though this was stated in the initial email.
Also by meeting with the interviewees and discussing their roles, we can form more specific questions to get the most out of what they do as Taras' answers were often a little vague.
Anneli also wants us to film the volunteers within their roles so the video is a little more lively than a person literally answering questions in front of a camera. She sent us a very useful video as an example of this.
With Taras this should be rather straightforward as we are his main priority as a Learner Mentor so we can film ourselves with him discussing our projects. However, the other roles will involve more in depth organising.
We will be focusing on the following roles:
- Visitor Services Volunteer - Tony Hathway and Taras
- Guide - Pam Morris
- Learning Assistant/Palace Water Walk - Rosie Petherick
- Risk Assessments (Events) - Peter Jones
- Learner Mentor - Taras
- Gardening - to be confirmed.
To film these volunteers within their role will involve finding members of the public who are willing and patient enough to be filmed. We discussed the possibility of inviting friends of the volunteers to the Palace or even using Anneli within the films. This still needs thinking about.
Our next move is to make a timeline of events so we have a sort of deadline - when will we be filming who etc. This should make the process run more smoothly.
All moving onwards and upwards!!
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