6 thoughts on “Interview with recent helicopter student graduate”

  2. The audio of the student is too low relative to the interviewer, if you have soft-spoken subject then obviously lav mic’ing would be good, but as a hack consider having the interviewer not speak so loud. Then the disparity would be so pronounced and then any passive audio compression would work better.

    You should frame tighter, unless there was something about the background that was part of the story, you should move in to better see the emotions on the subject face and eyes, that would help the audio too.

    If this wasn’t raw footage, then either edit for highlights or explain and get to the point better, I was confused as to what and why I was watching this. Title cards with questions might tighten up the pace and also remove the who is this guy asking questions cloud that hangs over the piece. also you can ask the subject to repeat the question when he answers and then the interviewer could be cut out completely.

    The subject looked uncomfortable, I thought at some point his iron grip on the deck fence would tear a chunk of wood loose from the railing. My solution when interviewing to get people relaxed is to tell the subject that we are going to do a few “dry runs”, “to adjust for lighting, shadows, sound, framing”, whatever, basically *lie* to them, and then film them acting completely naturally and loose and then bingo, you’re done, before the “real” shooting starts.

    also the white balance seemed wrong the whites in the forehead, hand and shirt looked blasted out. Not that it matters much, audio is 100x more important than the picture quality.

    Feel free to delete these comments if they are not the kind of feedback you were looking for. I am just trying to help.

  3. Very good, I might experiment with having the questions appear in text over images of the stuff you are highlighting (ie “Did you like the ~R44” appears over an image of what that is, “This amazing flight into Boston downtown” with a visual as to why that is as interesting as the interviewee found it.) If not maybe just put your interviewer questions through something like the levelator ( http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator ) so that they are the same volume or softer than the responses. (maybe you have done this and there is something about the french voice that makes it softer anyway.)

  4. Following is offered in constructive vs critical spirit.

    Do the interview in front of an R44 with the East Coast Aero Club Logo visible (or, better, on it). Can you commission something distinctive for the helicopters? These were wildly popular once upon a time.

    The woods setting, cabin, plus the somewhat uncomfortable interviewee makes it look like early scene from Evil Dead

    Show video of what you’re trying to emphasize. The three new helicopters, the day and night flights in class B, maybe some dramatic off-field settings/landings.

    My sense is you’re not using the available bandwidth to communicate your story.

  5. Video induces vertigo by constant camera movement (bad tripod?) Movement of backdrop also distracts the eye from the person’s face.
    Sound is bad.
    Person being interviewed looks very tense.
    Rhythm of the interview is uncomfortable.

  6. Thanks, everyone, for the feedback. We’d really like to have one of these for every student who graduates, so we need to come up with a way to do this at a reasonable cost in time and money (i.e., we can’t simply hire a professional crew to come in). A big issue, I think, is what the graduate should talk about. A helicopter rating is not that exciting to people who aren’t interested in helicopter ratings. But then the only way for us to be successful is to get more people interested in helicopter ratings…

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