a blog-series recounting the making of "Seven Year Rental"

 

In the weeks immediately following the Jackson store closure we regained our momentum and hit our stride.

Not only did we resume with filming formal interviews, we came back with some very strong interviewees, including John.  At that time, John was balancing two jobs (running the stores, and another alltogether different job).  He was incredibly hard to come by, and finding time for us was no small feat.  So his willingness to give us the benefit of the doubt about this whole project and play along meant a lot.

We also had a surge in the amount of in-store digital footage we captured.  We hadn't had too many days with the four of us all available to do the in-store shoots; when we finally did, we were clearly overstaffed.  In the end, we found that the digital footage with customers worked best with a two-person crew; one person to film, and the other to explain the project and collect waivers.  But by this point, the security camera had proved to be the best means for capturing customer interactions, so the digital footage quickly became  primarily one-on-one, with me filming the employee on duty (and coworker) by myself.  Nobody's expectations for the film were ever very high, so the one-on-one footage never felt intrusive..  

Through all this, the fundamentals of our process took shape, and the footage we collected came to define our look and feel.  Once we felt confident we'd be albe to deliver in the end, we turned our attention towards editing.

But with editing, we were once again starting from scratch.

 

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