26. causeway bay and editing

Sunday, June 7
Yesterday morning, I went around my neighbourhood in search for a cleaner to interview. Despite my previous fears of not being able to find a street cleaner, they were everywhere. The fact that I had not expected this was a bit sad. It showed me that I often take people like street cleaners for granted just because they are paid to serve us. However, all the street cleaners I found were 'too busy' to be interviewed by me. I found one in the end, but he was very unopinionated and most of his answers were one-word answers. I learned through this how to interview people better, to draw out more interesting questions from the interviewee. Later in the afternoon, I met Chris and Marcus in Causeway Bay to film the streets there. Despite the fact that Causeway Bay is usually full of litter, we found very little yesterday, and only managed to film single pieces of trash at a time. We went into Wellcome to film the shelves stocked full of candy, to show how much plastics and wrappers there are in Hong Kong, much of which then ends up on the streets. After that, Benny and I went to look for a cleaner to interview, as I did not particularly want to use the answers from the cleaner I interviewed this morning. This time, it was easier to find someone to interview, mainly because the morning rush to clean everything up was over by then. The cleaner this time was a lot more friendly and open, and answered all our questions very well, providing a satisfactory interview with the answers we wanted. Benny then suggested we go to the wet market near Times Square. This turned out to be a good idea. We got a really nice shot of boxes and styrofoam next to a truck there. We also filmed the crowd crossing the street in front of Sogo, as Chris wrote on the shot list 'busy streets'. I don't exactly know why he wants that shot, but I think the shot we got of the crowd was pretty good. Overall, today was quite a good day of work.

Monday, June 8
Today, Tiffanie Ma joined our group, which was pretty good for us since Benny apparently listens to her. We were split into pairs: Chris and Marcus doing the voiceovers, Kevin and I editing the footage we had so far, and Benny and Tiffanie finding music. We had a small problem while capturing and had to ask Mr. Chang to fix it. Turns out that there were many empty spaces in the tape because this tape has been used for so many previous projects. To capture, we would have to fast forward to the next recorded section. I learned that if the numbers at the top of the camera start scrolling, it means that something is recorded on that section of the tape. When it stops scrolling, it means that section of the tape is blank. This is something I didn't know before. The interview Benny and I conducted yesterday has gone missing from the tape. Hopefully this is only because of all the blank spaces, and we will be able to find it, or we will have to use the interview I conducted, which is a lot less interesting. After capturing, we ordered the timeline and cut out unwanted parts. After that, our jobs got jumbled up. Boris volunteered to narrate for the voiceover, so I went with him to the practice room next door to record. Chris wrote the script for the voiceover. The keyboard strangely refused to work and the 'h's, 'y's, and 'n's did not appear on the script until I changed the keyboard for the one on the computer next to the one Chris was using. Benny and Tiffanie found quite a good selection and variety of music we can use for our documentary, so overall I think today was a good day's work.