Evaluation – For our research we used a range of research methods. Like primary and secondary research, for the secondary research we used stuff like the internet and books to find stuff out. This helped us to research the many different techniques used for interviews. We learnt a lot from the books and internet, we were suggested to watch many videos that taught us how to compose interviews and use our interview techniques. These videos told us that we should make our interviews in a certain way, some of the tips it told us were stuff like keeping the subject we’re interviewing a certain distance away from the camera and to use the ‘Rule of Thirds’ to keep them to one side and to look at the interviewer on the other side and not straight down the camera. We also found out in our research many other tips for conducting a perfect interview for example how the lights should be bright and you can easily see the subject and they are in focus and not blurred into the background. Another tactic learnt was that the subject being interviewed should be either on the left or right of the camera and looking at the opposite side where the interviewer is and not down the camera, the interviewee should not be cut off at top or bottom of the shot and should have a straight posture as that really helps to show that they care about the interview they’re in and they sound more clearer by being more straight and confident. By doing this it makes the interview as professional as possible and really helps with the authenticity of it.
There are many advantages of using primary over secondary research and vice versa, for example when we made our interviews we found out that using primary research is better than secondary because we had the chance to make mistakes and get used to all the settings on the Marantz kit and the cameras as well, This also helped us to put our skills to use that we had learnt from our previous research for our primary and secondary research in class. The extra interviews we did helped us to edit as well, we learnt how to edit the interviews in premiere pro, this helped us to sync the audio together and get used to how premiere works when editing our final documentary.
Whereas there are a lot of advantages of using secondary over primary for example. When using secondary research you can find many different sources to use and if you need a second answer or a third you can easily find them to certain yourself you have the right or wrong answer. An upside to secondary research is that there are a lot of sources to use and a lot of different books as well, you can easily find the bits of information you need just by looking at the glossary or index of a certain book or webpage. Some of the research in books or websites are done professionally and are from the horse’s mouth but a downside is there are websites like Wikipedia where the information could very easily be altered or not right in the slightest. This could damage your research if you get something wrong and don’t even know it which is why it’s vital you get a second or even third answer to certify yourself and to make sure you’re not only spreading round false information that your research won’t be wrong in the slightest.
Some places I used for my secondary research was books that I acquired from the college library. For example the book ‘Capture the Portrait’ by Jenni Binder published in 2008 gave me most of the secondary information I needed for my research into all the different composition shots. I used websites like the BBC because it is very professional and you know for certain that the information presented is true and not altered in the slightest way. I used videos from the BBC’s ‘Student’ section on their page to learn about my interview research, this video went very much in depth at how I should be making an interview interesting vibrant and professional. I also used internet videos on YouTube to learn about doing interviews to see if there was anything else I could learn but sadly I only managed to get the same information from it I did the BBC student video.
When doing our audio research I learnt that lapel mics are much better then boom mics by doing tests like the interviews because they give us a sense of how each of them work and record the sound we need. By doing these tests I came to the conclusion that lapel mics are better because for the type of interview I will be doing, it will be in a small living room and there wouldn’t be much background noise which is why the lapel mics will be the best ones to use for my interview. I decided this because the boom mic not only wouldn’t it fit in the room, it wouldn’t be the best choice for the type of audio I wanted to record. The boom mics are made to be used outdoors or in Large rooms where you needed to record a lot of people but because I was interviewing one person, lapel mics would do the job just fine.
=============================================================================================
Dan's Film and TV Production Blog 