Reframing the Interface 4- Buffalo Fish Shoot + Thoughts Part 1

The first part of my Buffalo Fish shoot involved filming a live performance at The Monarch in Camden Town, in addition to shooting an interview with the band before they went on stage.

Interior of the venue

Shooting Schedule Buffalo Fish Live at The Monarch 2016 by JoshuaSampson


Interview
For the interview itself I came up with a rough list of questions and facts on each of the individuals so I could bounce off of their responses and also be prepared when knowing what questions to ask.

Buffalo Fish and Terry Wapram Notes by JoshuaSampson

Interview

We arrived a few hours before the performances to set up the interview. When arriving at the venue in the evening we found that the lighting inside the venue was not sufficient enough and the lights and stands we had brought would have made for a harsh, bright light on each of their faces. Additionally the noise around the venue was difficult to lower through boom positioning meaning that it would be very distracting and difficult to pick up their voices, even though we had gone to the quitest part of the venue. Because of these issues I decided to make the decision to postpone the interview to a later date but film the performance which would be very beneficial to my film. Next time I will come down and inspect the venue in the evening to double check the lighting is efficient. I will also look into further techniques of muffling the background noise if I want to shoot interviews in a venue in the future.

Live Filming

On shoot I had myself, Julia and Katherine on the shoot and for the performance I decided to operate my camera, the Sony A6000, have Katherine on the main static wide shot (EX3) and Julia on the Canon 600d which she is most familiar with. I was at the left hand side of the stage, Julia was at the right and the main camera was positioned in the middle of the pit. Additionally I had the Zoom H4N recording from the mixer to get the best possible sound. I feel the shooting of the event went well however when further inspecting the audio recordings on the H4N I realised that the sound had been recording at too high of a level due to the sound engineer changing the mix as thr performance was going on, which meant the tests I did had different levels so the recording was crackly and the levels were so high that the sound became muffled and inaudible meaning I would have to rely on the Sony A600/600d for sound. When closely inspecting the footage I found the sound recording on the A6000 came out surprisingly well so I am going to use that sound to give my film a raw, live atmospheric feeling to the cutaways of the performances I will incorporate into my documentary.

Screenshot of Sony A6000 footage. 

Overall I am very satisfied with the outcome of the footage I got and I feel that it was actually a positive outcome not filming an interview at the venue and persevering to film at a later date helped as I could go away and arrange an interview in a more secluded location that would be more aesthetically pleasing due to the fact I could have more control on the image quality.