Week 14 Reflection

We met up to work on the final edit for this project multiple times this week so that all of the elements would be ready for the final student screening. We worked on rearranging items and centering it more around our new interview, which was much stronger than the first one. We worked on weeding out which vox pops were most important and which could be left out.

We also added titles and lower-thirds. In order to make our project longer, we added some sections with music and b-roll to give breaks between topics and make it so it wasn't wall-to-wall interview and talking. In our new interview, he mentions advertisements and, even though he was the only one to mention it, we thought it was important and interesting to our story so we added old advertisements from archive.org that meshed well with what he was explaining. I'm happy with how that turned out and I think it added an interesting element to our project as a whole.

Week 13 Reflection

Since we had all of this new footage from the previous week, we worked on incorporating this footage into our rough cut. Pretty immediately we realized that it should be more centered around our new interview and have Gary's interview be supplemental information.

We didn't have enough time to create the exact story we wanted and are still thinking about how we can structure this project to be more focused on thew new interview. We also want to look into adding music and creating a title card to pull things more together. All in all, the b-roll we got looks really nice and the interview, at least in my opinion, adds a whole other layer to our story and has pushed it in the direction we originally intended.

Week 12 Reflection

This week we lucked out quite a bit. We had planned to go to Cumberland and interview a younger tobacco farmer, he cancelled but we got someone else almost immediately who works in distributing tobacco and worked on a tobacco farm when he was younger. He had a lot of really old trinkets of cigarettes, tobacco, ads, etc. that he collects that turned out to be really interesting B-roll to add to our project.

This interview was the complete opposite of Gary Matthews in that we only asked a few questions and he talked forever about that one question. It was not difficult at all to get personal stories out of him and I'm really pleased with all of the footage we got and think it will add immensely to our project.

VISIONS Response

I was generally pleased with how Visions turned out. There were a few minor bumps here and there, and I tend to exaggerate those in my head, but overall I’m very pleased with the final outcome. I am not the best public speaker and somehow I ended up signing up for three things to moderate but it kept me busy and I’m happy that I was actually able to do it well. In the first block there were a few hitches, such as Sightseers skipping and having to be replayed, which in my head was the end of the world but it turned out alright in the end. I think my main fear was offending a filmmaker or scholar who came all this way and did all this work. I didn’t want Noah to feel like his film wasn’t being appreciated and that was something I tried to avoid for all filmmakers and scholars during the Q+A. I wanted each person to feel like their work was being appreciated and I hope that I accomplished that.

My personality is not well-suited to the Video Race, I was a nervous wreck when I had to do it last year, but this year was a lot of fun and Hillary was incredible to work with. I don’t do well with second-hand embarrassment but since I knew everybody on the staff and all the teams, it was much more fun to participate (or maybe I’ve just grown up a little who knows). Overall I felt like Visions was pretty professional and honestly just a fun experience for everyone involved. There’s not much I would change about how things wrapped up other than mingling a little bit more (something I’ve never been good at and will have to continue to work on for the rest of my life). There was that one time that I told everyone to come to a private dinner but we won’t mention that again I’ve already thought about it every second of my life since then.

Probably my favorite part was Felix's Keynote Speech. I was extremely moved and inspired by everything he had to say. I also loved the way the Second Film Block concluded the day. It’s mostly just weird to have something that you’ve spent a year working on be over and done with in a single day; however, I’m proud of all the work I put in.

Week 11 Reflection

Alex and I were busy with Visions this week so this was kind of blank week for us; however, we did schedule an interview for this weekend to get back on track. I emailed Harris Teeter to see if we could get some general B-Roll of the cigarette aisles but I have yet to hear back and it doesn't seem likely that will go through since they're positioned behind the counter.

We did, however, work on adding our new B-roll into our rough cut and moving around the interviews and the vox pops to make a little bit more sense and add some empty space with just b-roll.

Week 10 Reflection

We had planned on interview Gary Matthews again; however, once we had already driven out to Cumberland County we realized that we were given an empty battery case for the camera. Luckily Jordan had her DSLR with her so we used that to take B-Roll but we were hesitant to conduct the interview because we weren't sure how different the footage would look on a different camera.

Since we are still working on finding that extra interview, we decided to work with the footage we have and try to make a cohesive film just with the footage and interview we already have. Like I said previously, the questions we asked during the vox pops did not exactly match up with the interview with Gary so we had a little trouble meshing the two together into an actual storyline. We also don't have any b-roll of the campus so it was a bit difficult transitioning between the two sections. We basically just took note of the general topics in Gary's interview and tried to connect what he said to some of the vox pops, which didn't always work out.

Week 9 Reflection

We are on the lookout for other tobacco farmers that might be more willing to be interviewed than Gary Matthews, since he did not seem as interested in redoing the interview and he was extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera. So far we have had a few dead-ends or rescheduling issues, but we think that an interview is what we really need to push our project in the correct direction that we originally intended for it.

We do still have an interview planned for this weekend with Gary Matthews again so hopefully we can expand upon our first interview and go more in-depth. We also want to get more B-Roll of the tobacco farm farther down in the growing process that way we can have some breathing room in our cut of just b-roll instead of wall-to-wall speaking.