Interview Filming days - Major Task

Oana's Interview

On the 21st of March, we had our First interview to film with Oana Nastasache. We met later than planned at 11:00 at my house, as Rianna was late by 30 minutes. This messed up our plan of discussing the final questions before going to the studio. After she arrived, we checked the gear to see if everything was charged and ready, then my dad offered to take us to the studio. Last minute, we decided to take one more tripod to the shoot, which did not have a plate to mount the camera on. In any case, we thought it would be useful to take it with

We somehow, as we initially had 1 tripod and 1 gimbal initially.

We moved the gear into the car and went on our way to Oana. We left my house at approximately 11:10. I know this because I took a photo of Rianna in the car at 11:07. We arrived at Oana's Studio at 11:20 ( I know because I called her ), and she gave us instructions on how to reach the studio. After we unpacked the gear from the car, we entered an old building and went up a few floors by the stairs. Then we went into a corridor and saw Oana stand in front of a door greeting us from a distance. The studio gave a very warm and welcoming feeling, and Oana was super friendly. As time was limited, we had a few minutes of small talk where we explained one more time our plan and began mounting everything. Rianna was very helpful as she quickly grabbed a chair and arranged a nice shooting angle which had plenty of natural light, and some of her paintings could be seen in the background. In the meantime, I was occupied with mounting the cameras on the tripod and gimbal.

During the mounting process, my dad started calling me repeatedly. I answered and he told me that he has an emergency shoot for which he needs the Sony A1 and the microphones, and that we had time till 12 to film with them. I was very angry initially because it was a very small chance of something like this happening, and we didn't expect it at all. He knew how much this shooting meant for my project, but I understand that he has his work. After I told Rianna the news, we began to speed things up as much as possible to at least have some footage. But as this was the first time setting up in a real environment, all the gear it took us much longer than expected. By the time I got everything set up, my Phone began ringing to get the camera downstairs. I told my dad 10 more minutes and began recording. The main camera was on the Tripod with a clear shot of her, and the close-up camera was set up on the gimbal, which was put on a table. We needed to improvise as the second tripod did not have camera mounts. We knew this was going to happen, but we also expected to have a table on which we could put the gimbal. Now another problem occurred as the main camera showed an error when pressing the record button. No SD card detected. It had an SD card as I checked the night before and in the morning. I started to panic and felt miserable as nothing was going as planned. Then I quickly decided to scratch the main camera completely.

 I put the table with the gimbal and the Nikon Z 7 in the place of the main camera and mounted the microphones onto it. We quickly pressed record, and the filming started. Rianna was directing and asking Oana questions, and I was thinking of ways to film the close-up shots. An idea struck my head of using my iPhone 15 Pro Max to film as many close-ups as possible. This was very hard because I did not have a Phone tripod and I needed to hold the Phone in my hand, which was not stable. After a few takes like this, another Idea struck my head of using the second tripod without a mount to hold my phone in place and act as a stabilizer. I did that and filmed as much as I could. I knew that the footage would look rough as the quality was not the same, and every close-up would be different as the camera was always moving because of the non-static position it was in. During filming, I discovered different interesting angles that used her shadows, and I filmed them as well. My phone started ringing again, and I quickly took the microphone off Oana and packed it into its case, then went down with the Sony and the microphones, receiver, and cables.

After I came back, we started recording again, but this time we set up Rianna's phone in front of the camera on the Voice Memos app. It recorded the audio, and the camera recorded the video on the gimbal. We did some testing to see that everything was working and continued filming for another 15 minutes, then we packed everything up, said hello, and went to Dali's museum. Surprisingly, we were satisfied with what we managed to film, and we were proud that we managed to adapt to these difficult situations. The topics were mostly the ones we prepared, like university, struggles, communities, and others. It was her first interview and she warned us about this. Therefore, she was buffering a lot while speaking. I told her not to worry, as we can edit everything that we don't like. It remains to be seen how the footage looks, but we covered all the topics we wanted to cover, and I was happy to have those shadow shots that otherwise I wouldn't have gotten. My dad called me to check if I managed to film without his camera. I discussed with him and told him that I did fine, but it was a stressful situation. He apologized, but I told him that I understand that these things can happen and I should have had a backup plan ( which I did ).

We took a taxi from a station nearby, which cost us 24RON to the museum. When we arrived, we explained to the 2 students at the reception about our project and asked permission to film. They said that we can film anything we want except other people visiting the museum. To start, we unpacked the camera and the gimbal and created a setup for filming. After that, we left the camera bag near the reception. We also paid for the VR experience, which was on the last floor, and they advised us to start our tour from there. The experience was interesting, but it wasn't the highest quality. After finishing, we asked the operator if he would be able to give us an interview. We didn't plan for this, but as no one else was there, we thought, why not? The interview took about 10 minutes, including setting up the light and mise en scene. Then we went to the other floors and started filming different sculptures, paintings, and photos. The shooting went smoothly, and we managed to film a lot of art. After about 1 hour, we finished and went to eat at Noodle Pack, which was approximately 50RON per person, as we both were very hungry. Then we went to Piata Muzeului, where we filmed the architecture and famous buildings, such as the House of Matei Corvin. We finished the whole day at around 16 as we scheduled. I took a bolt home because of all the gear that I was left alone with, which cost me 17RON ( the minimum spend ).

Ovidiu's Interview

On the 20th, we attended Sebastian's vernissage at which we were able to film. It was a great experience and I enjoyed being there. The art pieces were amazing, and he truly is an unbelievable artist. It was crowded and kind of hard to capture the shots without making people uncomfortable, but we did manage to get a lot of great footage. On the 21st of March, we arranged to meet again at 15:00 at my house to discuss the questions and how we are going to arrange everything. Rianna was late again, but this time even more until 15:45, which left us with no time to rehearse. After she arrived, we quickly ordered a bolt and got the equipment on the street to wait for it. Till Rianna arrived, I checked everything alone to ensure it was charged with memory and functional. This time we didn't bring the other tripod with us and we based ourselves on only one together with the gimbal. The problem at the last shoot was that the SD card was set on photography and not video. I don't know exactly what happened, but my dad was able to film with the camera after I gave it to him.

We loaded everything into the bolt and got going to Ovidiu's studio. It cost us 20RON as it was high traffic. When we arrived, we saw a house with the number that he told us to go to. I called him and he got out of the house to welcome us. Very friendly, as always, we entered the studio and got to work by unpacking everything. Rianna was very cautious not to break anything and have a smooth and fast installation. This time everything went to plan. We discussed for a bit what to talk about and some of the questions that he liked, then we placed Ovidiu in one of his chairs near a window that created direct natural sunlight that acted as a key light on Ovidiu's face. In the background, some of his paintings can be seen, which perfectly sets the mise en scene.

  I mounted the main camera on the tripod and the second camera on a gimbal on the table. Ovidiu had a light that he used for his paintings, which we were able to use as he had a stand for it, and our light didn't. We started recording with no problems, everything went smoothly for 15 minutes. Then the main camera suddenly stopped. I immediately thought about battery heat, as this problem occurred to my father multiple times as well.

I quickly changed the batteries with the backup ones, and we got back to filming for another 15 minutes. We managed to cover many interesting topics, such as the difficulties of being a Romanian artist or how he gets inspired. After we finished, we packed everything up and thanked Ovidiu before we left. Both of us went straight home, and I checked some of the footage. I realized that after I changed the battery, I forgot to calibrate the focus of the main camera. It isn't very bad, but it is noticeable, which bothers me.