Broadcast Critique (summer)

     The segment that my partner and I chose to do the segment on was "Capuchino Summer 2011"; a piece about what students of cap did during their summer vacation. We came up with this idea because simply it was the only obvious one to us that wasn't taken, and we chose it because it was relevant and potentially interesting. It was very easy finding people to interview because everyone took part in summer one way or the other other, but we chose students from our own class because it was convenient and moved the process along quicker, for we knew that we would have to send it out on tape the first weak to preserve its content. Our questions were very focused on summer, and we formed questions in order to extract out the most interesting parts of their summer in order to make the piece more lively and fun for the audience, such "What did you wish you did this summer", and one funny response was "I wish i got kidnapped and put into a van and drove away".

      The production during the interview was a little rough due to many factors. When we did the interviews, their was construction on all three levels of the campus, so during the interviews, their is faint sound of construction work going on that is a bit distracting.  Another aspect that we could'nt very well control was the lighting; the clouds were out so it was somewhat dull. We definitely didn't like the outcome of this part because it didn't resemble the joyous ideas of summer: the sun is out with palm trees and vibrant scenery. As the man behind the camera, i made a decision to sacrifice following the rule of thirds and putting the interviewee off to the side in order to capture dual graphic vectors that covered the z-axis. On one side of the camera were lunch tables lined up, and on the other was a row of plants. I decided to do this because it called for a very interesting setting and shot, and also because it made the scenery very green which is generally appealing.

      The script was a strong component of this segment. The opener was full of colorful words such as "bustling" and "adventure". Along with that, the voice itself was very fluent and jolly, producing a welcoming and exciting voice to grab the audiences attention. We also used voice overs to cover for the different questions that we asked our interviewees. These as well were well produced and welcoming. The grand "finale" was a good wrap up that really demonstrated the distinction and uniqueness of this summer in comparison to all of the previous summers as stated by the words "this summer will definitely go down in the memory books".
     The main difficulty in producing this segment was finding b-roll do resemble what is being said, but we coped with this difficulty by retrieving clips and images from the internet (primarily google images and youtube). We placed these clips in the front and end of each individual interview to avoid jump cuts between different people answering the same questions. On the other hand, we didnt use any audio transitions, we thought it was unnecessary to do so because we just need audio for the corresponding interviews. We placed a subtle background music that was upbeat and summer-like vibe to it to match the segment itself, and in the end we raised its level to provide for a fuller effect and a finished feeling. For the images, we placed them directly after an interviewee mentioned something that deals with that particualar image.

      Overall, i was proud of this piece because it was satisfactory and accomplished our basic goals. Though i wish we could have gotten our own b-roll footage and got out to beaches or so to maximize our experience, i was satisfied with the b-roll we ended up with and the content of the interviews was very good. If i had more time, i would like to go out and gather my own b-roll to bring the quality of the project up, and make the its correspondence with the interviews a little more close. The most important lesson that i learned from this project is to choose a topic that will enable you to get some good and doable b-roll, instead of taking from the internet.