Gabriel Lopez Dot Net

My next film project is to shoot a documentary style movie about the people of the tenderloin district – the neighborhood I’ve called home for the past 5 years.

The plan is to interview as many folks as possible that live and/or work on the streets. Last night was my first outing. I ventured out of my apartment around 1am, and starting walking east towards Union Square. I only made it two blocks before running into my first panhandler sitting in front of my favorite Thai Restaurant – OSHA. As I approached him, he asked me for some change but before he could finish I asked him if he’d be interested in making a little more money for 10 minutes of his time. I explained to him what I was doing and convinced him to walk down the block to a church, where we proceeded to setup my equipment near the front steps. This being my first time, it took me a while to setup all my gear and I was a little nervous having never interviewed anyone before, let alone a homeless person.  He was very patient with me and in the end the interview went fairly smooth. About half way thru, I realized I had forgotten to attach my new microphone to my camera! Oops. The sound did not turn out that great, but hopefully still usable after I tweak it in postproduction.

Here’s a pic of my first interviewee, “Tootoo” Brown.

On my way home, another (younger) guy asked me for a dollar, so I gave him the whole spiel, and before I know it I’m setting up again at the same church stairs. This time I remembered to attach my Microphone. The interview starts and immediately I realize this man is not all mentally there. He was also jonesing for some crack (which he revealed later in the interview) causing him to sway back and forth a lot and act very jittery. It was clear he was in need of a fix.  He claimed to have been a professional golf player who was currently down on his luck and had recently lost everything. The interview lasted about 5 minutes before my battery ran out and I was forced to pack up and go home. It was late and I was tired but too excited to lay my head down before checking out my new footage. After transferring the files over to my laptop, I was devastated to find out that there was no sound for the second interview! I didn’t understand why until I realized I had forgotten to turn the Microphone on! Ah well, bet I won’t do that again.

All in all, I learned a lot last night. Not just to be mentally and physically prepared but I also discovered some techniques that work and others that don’t work at all.

Equipment Used:

Canon T2i
Canon  EF 50mm Lens 1:1.4
Rode VideoMic
Tripod