While in some ways our film was just getting started in the spring of 2007, we were also trying desperately to bring one element - our formal interview filming - to a close.
We'd always planned for an ensemble of former employees to help narrate the day-to-day life we were capturing in the store. I had a long list of former coworkers I thought would be great for this, and while not everyone wound up sitting for us, we got more than enough great footage from those who were willing to give it a shot. Matt and Wolf, Jane and Jesse, Kyle, Mike and Theresa - they all came in with an open mind for what we were doing, even when It might not have been clear what we would be able to do with all their talk about Video Plus. But their responses definitely served a purpose, and I was grateful they were willing to make the time to humor us and play along.
I had been working my list of potential subjects since last fall and after nine months of pursuing some folks over and over, it was time to give it up. We had what we needed.
By the end of June we wrapped our formal interviews at the same place we'd started our informal interviews, with Kayla - now a former employee. It gave us another great sense of time to have interviewed her as a current employee seven months earlier in November, and now a few months removed from working there. It was a way of keeping her in the film long after her in-store footage had passed and helped to blend the current employee footage into the former employee footage.
With the formal interviews complete, a weight was lifted from our project's shoulders and we were one step closer to the end of filming.