six women, one day, seven films
a single shoot day for women in film and television uk, cut into a highlights film and a separately finished piece for every speaker on it.
the wftv mentoring scheme closes each year with a reflections event. one evening, one venue, six mentees and mentors to record, and a highlights film owed afterwards. the usual answer is a single event video with everyone in it for eight seconds. we shot it so that each speaker could also leave with a film of her own.
an event runs once and does not wait
a live event gives you no second take. the room fills, the speeches start, and the six people you need on camera are also the six people everyone else wants to talk to. every interview had to be captured between other commitments, in whatever corner of the venue was quiet at that moment.
the second problem is that six interviews shot in six different corners normally look like six different jobs. different light, different backgrounds, different distance. cut together, it reads as coverage rather than as one considered piece.
and the deliverable is really two deliverables. wftv needed a highlights film for the scheme, and each speaker needed something she could post herself. those are different edits with different lengths and different endings, from the same afternoon of material.
six interviews in one evening only look like one film if you decide that before you arrive.
one grammar, six corners
the set-up was fixed before the doors opened: the same lens, the same eyeline, the same distance, and a background chosen for depth rather than for what happened to be behind the chair. plants, brick, a window, a booth. the locations change from speaker to speaker and the framing does not, which is what holds the six together when they are cut side by side.
the room around the words
interviews alone make a talking-heads film. the evening itself carries the other half: the arrivals, the crowd, the presentation, the moment someone finds the person she was hoping to meet. shot handheld and loose, on purpose, so it sits against the locked-off interviews rather than competing with them.
seven finished pieces
one shoot day left as seven separate deliverables: a highlights film for wftv to publish, and six individual films, each one finished with its own opening, its own pacing and its own end. the speakers could post their own piece the week it landed, which is what turns an event film into something the people in it actually share.
