Master Shot Sequence

As Director of the Master Shot Sequence for our second project I was excited to see that the script was a "generic" script in which we could go in any direction. As I thought about what could be done with the story and had numerous ideas bounce around in my head. I was hoping to do something that others hadn't done previously but need to be conscious enough that I wouldn't take on too much of a project and leave the short in peril. When our team decided that Sam and Lydia were going to act in the short I had envisioned them as a young couple who are on a leisurely stroll in a downtown setting. From this point I wanted to come up with something at the end of the film that would be completely unexpected that might add a bit of humor to the storyline. What better way to that than to give guns to a happy couple with a stroller and pay homage to the greats of Bonnie and Clyde and Natural born Killers, with less violence and blood of course. As a group we all seemed pretty happy with the idea and began work immediately.    

Reflections, and I don't mean mirrors.

Shooting vox-pops is a challenging and often times rewarding endeavor. When a person holding a camera approaches a stranger it's likely that we'll receive a negative response. But when the person is accepting and involved with your topic, it's a refreshing and rewarding experience. For our vox-pops the people that were engaging brought with them a colorful tone to their responses to our questions and that made for much better, and entertaining footage. I found that having a topic such as ours (drag queens) brought out the best in our random interviews. They were both delighted and intrigued to answer our questions. I found that the further out a question is from a persons view of “normal” the better the response would be. The vox-pop portion of the Documentary Interview was as interesting as the subject matter itself. I had done only one of these before and would be happy to do another in the future as the raw nature in which people can express themselves on camera was very refreshing and humorous.