SITTING FOR PHOTOS

I have been woefully negligent about blogging for the past week or so, for which I apologize. I have been cooped up in an editing room, and I thought it would be a tad rude to start typing away on my laptop while I was supposed to be directing an edit.

But many of you have kindly e-mailed or posted asking how the A&E interview went on Saturday. Thanks for asking!

It went really well. They interviewed me for over an hour, far longer than I expected. The producer/interviewer really knew his Harry Potter, had read my book, asked smart questions -- really all the elements one could wish for (including someone to do hair and make-up). And as I mentioned, John Granger and Steve Vanderark were also interviewed. (Actually, given our relative prominence in the HP world, I think I'm the "also" in that sentence.)

This particular special, to air mid-July on A&E (yes, of course I'll post the air date when I have it!), is tied to the release of the movie version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Because of this tie-in, the interview had to focus on the movies, not the books. In fact, we were not allowed to say the word "book." We also weren't allowed to talk about anything that happened in Half-Blood Prince or that might happen in Deathly Hallows.

Needless to say, this resulted in some very interesting self-censorship. It also meant I really couldn't talk about much from my book (only 2 months left to buy it! What are you waiting for?!). At one point, the interviewer asked me to talk about Severus Snape, and I sat and thought for a minute, then said, "You know, I really can't." Oh, I blathered something for him, but he won't be able to use it.

He was happy with my interview though, said there's lots of stuff they can use. The reason wasn't that I was particularly brilliant. The reason is because I did such a good job of self-censorship.

Which ties in directly to what I've been doing the past week that has kept me away from my blog.

You see, early in the school year, I volunteered to work alongside a commercial producer/school mom who's a friend of mine in compiling the school's graduation video for Cory's class. It really looked, frankly, like I was goign to have next to nothing to do. Another class mom who's a well-respected film editor had volunteered to edit it, my friend was collecting all the video and still photos from the various families... Not much for me to do at all.

And then Editor Mom had a diva fit and walked away from the project. Uh-oh. What do we do now? Well, Producer Mom knew a young just-out-of-film-school editor who would do it for us "for a price." Great. Still not much for me to do.

Until we actually saw the rough cut from Young Editor Girl. Which sucked. Totally and completely sucked. Bad picture choices, bad music choices, bad video cutting -- nothing about it worked. Producer Mom and I did the only sensible thing -- we panicked.

And then I stepped in and offered to start from scratch and just direct the entire cut. So that's what I've been doing this week and last week. I've been sitting over the shoulder of Young Editor Girl literally directing her frame-by-frame choices. I wrote an AV script, I re-chose all the pictures and video, I've basically been doing everything but typing in the commands for her (and sometimes that prospect is very tempting). We should have been done early this week, but we will still be working next week.

How is this tied to my HP interview? Well, it was the time spent sorting through video interviews of kids, literally thousands upon thousands of still photos covering 7 years (most utterly unuseable), odd snips of videos from field trips and soccer games and talent shows (again, disastrously unuseable for the most part), that made me so immediately savvy as to what the HP producer was going to need.

From this combined experience, let me offer a few helpful hints, should you be either sitting for an interview or shooting potentially archival footage in the near future (Producer Mom and I are going to write up some version of these hints to hand out to our daughters' 4th grade class, to try to improve the level of raw content we might have to deal with in two years):

--When you're asked a question on camera, repeat the question in your answer. If someone says, "Talk a bit about Severus Snape," don't say "He's the best character in the book." Do say "As we look at all the characters in the stories, Severus Snape stands out as one of the most fascinating, for several reasons," and go from there. If someone asks, "What's the most important thing you learned at school?" start your answer with "The most important thing I learned at school was..."

--Shoot your photos/videos from the appropriate height. If you're a six-foot tall man and you're shooting 4-1/2' tall kids, don't hold the camera at your eye level. All we'll see is tops of heads.

--And while you're getting down to your subjects' level, please get in front of them as well. As memorable as your hours of footage from from the class trip to Boston might be to you, to the rest of us, shots of a crowd of 40 kids from the rear are really, well, boring.

--Make your subjects look into the camera frame. Run toward the camera frame. Look up from what they're doing. Interact with you behind the camera. If we can't see the kids' eyes, we can't use the photo/video. (Obviously there are exceptions to this -- sports shots, for instance.)

--Think more than two-dimensionally when you compose your still photos. We've had a horrible time weeding through hundreds of photos where a group of kids is lined up horizontally across the frame. Ultimately, all these shots look the same. We jump for joy when we find a photo that actually makes use of the concept of foreground and background. Think of it this way: If you're shooting a group of kids sitting at a rectangular table (lunch, crafts, whatever), the obvious shot is for you to stand along the long side of the table and make the kids look at you. Instead, stand at the short end of the table and make the kids look down the table toward you. Instant foreground and background! Whoever has to look at your pictures will thank you.

...Anyway, that's how my HP interview actually owed something to the reason I haven't been blogging... No more interviews in my future, but lots more editing. I have today off so Young Editor Girl can color-correct, put in her dissolves and other transitions, and render her video. Tomorrow, we're back into it to tweak away. It's going to be an awesome video, I have to say.

And as soon as it's done, I will be back here to blog. Maybe even sooner.