Our Ambleside project finally came to fruit after what felt like years of preparation on our part. We were unlucky enough to not snag our contributor on the first day but in fact only had our final day to film when Shane finally got back to us and told us that he was able to film for a limited amount of time.
Whilst our block for shooting was very, very slim we made use of the restricted time that we had to get a completely organic interview with our subject and as a result we didn’t need to stage anything in order to gain any sort of response from Shane as we were filming and as a result, the only constructed part of our film was the physical, walking scenes that played a very pivotal part in our narrative.
Though the problems that arose with a completely organic, non scripted interview with our contributor meant that if we didn’t get all of our footage initially then we would be unable to record again. So we were 100% sure that with whatever questions that we asked for our contributor would gain the answer that we desired rather than whatever the contributor thought was appropriate for the time.
Whilst the organic approach was by far the most natural and informative way to gain our information and we were assured that the reaction of our contributor was genuine, the rambling nature of the interview meant that during the paper edit process we had to eliminate and prioritise a lot of the footage that we had gained in order to tell the same story, but in a concise and affirmative way that wouldn’t detract from the impact value of the scene.
Our final piece, whilst having cropped out a very large amount of our information, I feel like it gathers the essence of what Shane was trying to detail to us. How the tragedy of his friend drowning spurred him on to do far greater thing for charity and eventually raise a lot, LOT of money for a charity in his friend’s honour that would help victims trapped in a similar state as huim
Not only is our narrative relatable, it also appeals to a very close sense of humanity within the reader than you may not have been able to see within the earlier draft.
Ramblings of a Film Student 