By Jolee Janda
FARMINGTON- The video story, something I had been slightly dreading for a while. This was certainly a learning experience that I will always remember when shooting future videos. Everything actually ended up being pretty easy, but the hardest part was filming and remembering every shot I wanted to get while on site. After getting a couple shots, it actually was a bit fun working with my subject and filming what was happening in the moment.
The scariest thing about filming at a big community event as a beginner is the amount of people that are there potentially watching you. Filming the TikTok was definitely easier than the video story even though it was a bigger event, since I felt more casual shooting a vertical video, even blending in with others that were taking photos or videos. Filming horizontally made things more real and professional, which was a little uncomfortable when people were just trying to shop in the store. Evan, the customer I was interviewing, made me feel more comfortable filming and he had a great attitude about being on camera.
The story came pretty naturally to me since I am a record collector myself. I knew the event was coming up and I knew that collectors were really excited about this year’s special limited releases. I wanted to try capturing the story from a collectors point of view instead of the businesses because every collector is so different but businesses are pretty similar when it comes to this event. I met some interesting people while in line that morning and it really inspired me to continue with capturing this event.
Since I am a film major, editing is something I have experience with and can do pretty smoothly. Editing this went pretty well, but it made me realize I should have looked and listened to my footage while I was filming. Since I filmed the interview outside, you could unfortunately hear the wind in almost all of the talking portions. I also wish I would have gotten a few more shots, specifically some of other people in the store and the record store day exclusives.
In the end, I think it was a pretty solid first try for a video story but I learned a lot of useful things for next time. Even if it didn’t turn out amazing, I ended up having a lot of fun filming and editing this piece and I would consider doing more non-fiction video work in the future!
Jolee Janda 