I’m not going to lie, finding a day where we can all meet up and film our content was not the easiest. Originally, we wanted to have 2 filming days. The first one, on November 16th (Thursday), to film the interview of Diana Szabo, our main subject’s daughter. The second one, on November 17th (Friday), would be all focused on Susana. We would film her interview, her sit down, and all the b-roll. However, on Wednesday night, it had rained all day causing an immense amount of flooding not only in Weston but in all of Broward County. This caused us to have to combined everything into one filming day on Friday. This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I wanted to have the two filming days just as a safeguard and so we wouldn’t have to feel rushed. However, everything ended up going perfectly.
We decided to film everything at Susana’s house, to keep everything convenient for her. All of us arrived at her house around 5 pm and set up all the equipment. The first thing we decided to film was Susana’s interview, as this would be the main audio guiding our documentary and was the most important part. The answers she gave in the interview would as help us set up any potential b-roll shots. Nati, one of my group members, was the interviewer as Susana was her grandmother. We thought this would make her feel a lot more comfortable during the interview. We also allowed Susana to answer the questions in her primary language, Spanish, as we realized she was very hesitant with her English and her Spanish was more fluid. We then shot her daughter’s interview, Diana, who was with her on the journey towards the end. She spoke English for her interview.
While filming the interviews, I controlled camera 1 and her mic audio, Yoav controlled camera 2, and Miguel was talking notes of any main points Susana talked about or any potential b-roll shots. We decided to go with the two camera angles when filming the interviews as it give the visual a little more variety and also a cinematic feel. It was a common thing I would see when watching other documentaries, so I thought it would be cool if we included it too.
Miguel and I took turns using the main camera and the handheld stabilizer to film b-roll. I loved the experience of using the stabilizer as it allowed us to get more diverse and dynamic b-roll, with out all the shakiness. I had never used one, usually I would just go completely handheld with the camera, but I will definetly be using it for future projects. All the equipment we used for this project we borrowed from BECON TV's Shortcuts program, where they provide filming equipment for students to use in order to produce any kind of projects they wish. This was such an amazing opportunity, a huge thank you to them as now of this could have been done without them!
After all the interviews were filmed, we filmed a sit down section with Susana, where she would go through photo books she had from the journey and answer some concluding questions. The main angle was of Susana sitting at the table going through the books. However, we used the second camera to get an additional higher angle that was a close up of just the books. This would be used to give the section some variety when she is talking in the new setting, constantly switching from the wide angle of her to the close up and vice versa.
We finished filming everything at around 9-9:30pm, concluding to about a 4-4 ½ hour filming day. I planned to go through all the footage that night when I got home as we cleared Saturday morning as a possible re-filming day. However, after going through the footage, I saw we had everything we needed and it was all technically sound, so there was no need to go back the next day.
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