This documentary was definitely a daunting task. Even with all the planning and scheduling was hard to actually execute. My stepdad works odd hours as a police officer and since the only week we had to film was Thanksgiving I had lots of family plans making my slots to film very small. I decided that I had to follow my plan and try my best to get the interviews done. I'll be going through the days as they were shown in the filming schedule.
Tuesday, Nov. 21st
After he arrived home from a haircut I sat him down and began asking questions. After a couple tries he became more comfortable and the interviews started to flow. It also helped that he was excited about being in the documentary. He wanted the outcome to be good so he put in the effort which made my job just slightly easier. These questions consisted of ones about his life before becoming a police officer. This section was meant to show the path of life our subject was meant to go on. This was also going to be shown in Fernanda's interviews. They both had career paths they had chosen to go into and love which is what is meant to be shown in the first section of interviews. These also served as an introduction to our subjects. For Joey, it would introduce him as a kid who had become a pro baseball player, and Fernanda as a young student balancing her dream job and being a student. We needed to capture this through our interviews which was why our questions were so important.
Here you can see a clip from Joey's first set of interviews.
Next, I had to interview Riley's mom who is a nurse. We decided we wanted her input on Joey's injury as that was the event that led to his redirection. We scheduled our time for 12:30 and I headed over with two simple questions. We didn't want her interview to take away from the story, more like add to it and show why it could be life-altering. She explained both of his injuries and that was pretty much it. I didn't really love the composition of this interview but thought that it was better than having nothing.
After interviewing Riley's mom I went to Joey's parent's house to pick up old photos and interview his mom. She was enthusiastic about the project and excited to help. Since Joey had played baseball since he was a kid I had quite a lot of footage to sift through so I began that while she prepared for the interview. Once again it was only one question and that was done purposely. We knew that too much back and forth might cause problems so asking her a simple question would give us just the right amount of material.
The last thing I did on this day was film b-roll of Joey as a police officer. He works odd hours and is off on weekends so I took advantage of the break and went to film the first day I could. I obviously can't film him actually working because it would be violating people's right to privacy, but I decided shots of him doing basic things were enough to get the point across.
Wednesday, November 22nd
This was the second day of production and all I really had to do was film Joey's present interviews and get b-roll around my house. For this set of interviews, Joey felt like he should be in his police uniform. While it was my project to direct I felt that it only made sense to allow him to do what he felt most comfortable in as well as it helping establish his new life. I really had to pry information out of him since it was late and he was tired, but in the end, I think they came out well. I also tried my best to situate him in the same setup at the past interviews, but of course, couldn't get it exactly.
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