Week 9

We finally got our Nat Geo guy! I am thrilled with the interview we got for him, even though it was pretty short. He was very enthusiastic and was generous enough to allow us to interview him during his busy schedule. Apparently he is experienced with interviews because of his affliation with National Geographic. He articulated very well and paused in all the right places. He definitely knew what he was talking about. I think I did well with the questions. I am happy with the way I structured them as the questions seemed to flow as if we were having a conversation. It was much different than the Carolina Tiger Rescue interviews though. He wanted to rehearse the questions before, which I found a bit odd as I have never down that with an interviewee. I was scared that rehearsing the questions would take away from when we were actually filming, but fortunately it did not.


Visions Film Festival

I was able to attend Visions even though we had an interview in Durham that afternoon. I attended the first conference block, which I was very impressed with. I was impressed with how invested each student was and how passionate they were about the topics of their papers. You could easily tell that each student who presented knew so much about the subject they were talking about. None of them read a script word for word. You could tell a few were a litter nervous, but generally I was very impressed with their public speaking skills. I found the essay "The Act of Piracy: Accessing the act of Killing in Indonesia" extremely interesting as a paper topic. I would never think to write a paper on such a topic and admire the student for being able to research and find out so much information about a risqué topic.

After the interview in Durham, we quickly made it back for the second film block. The films were fantastic. I was so impressed and inspired after watching these films, especially a few of the animations. The quality and content of these films were superb. The animated short Villains has to be my favorite. The handwork and detail put into that film was easily recognizable and I highly admire that student filmmaker for such a high quality product. The film Fucking Be really grabbed my attention with its very unique beginning. The content of that film was very good and intriguing, I just wish the production value of it was a little better and more polished.

Overall, I was fascinated with Visions Film Festival. This was my first time attending and I was extremely impressed by how smoothly it ran and how organized and professional it was. I know many people in Visions and know how much hard work is put in and I can confidently say as an attender that the handwork and dedication clearly shows in the final product.