Jenks and Jenks

As of this morning, all of our audio is synced up to the video we’ve taken. After several painstaking hours of manually linking the audio from the zoom mic to our footage (thanks Lisa), we are now ready to begin editing. Although we still have a few interviews to conduct, the majority of synchronizing the audio and video is done. Now we have to start sorting through all of the footage we’ve collected, which could take quite a while as well.

Although we’ve collected some awesome footage, we’ve also collected a LOT of footage. Sorting through it to find clips that fit the story we’re trying to tell will be pretty difficult, especially now that we’ve found a new angle. We’re now trying to center our story around a father son duo. The son is none other than Dave Jenks. It turns out that his dad is a firefighter as well, and he was the first responder to a major incident back in the 1990s that we are focusing on.

Mr Alan has been telling us all along that if we just keep pushing forward, that the story will fall into place. He was right. Now we have an awesome story to tell, and some great footage to help us tell it.

-Kristen

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Finding Knuckles

The papaya crew has been tremendously productive this past week. Due to several snowstorms we have been slightly delayed, but we have done our best to catch up. Last Friday we were able to make it over to the fire station to capture more footage. We didn’t want to conduct interviews this time, and wanted to focus more on getting B- Roll. Firefighters Dave Jenks and Steve Tyner were incredibly helpful. They were able to run the alarms for us, and pull out some of the fire trucks. We soon found out that Dave (a.k.a Knuckles) was part of film festival 2005. Still bitter about losing to the movie Lily, Dave is determined to make out Documentary the best it can be. It was pretty cool getting to just stand around and talk to them, and it was an overall successful day. We have plans for February break to edit, and get more footage. Here is a picture we took with Dave (left) and Steve (right):)

-Angela

Interviews: Day 2

Yesterday, Angela and I (Kristen) went down to the firehouse to conduct more interviews while Lisa was at work. Last time, we only got through one interview, so we tried to be more efficient and get more done this time around. We ended up doing three interviews. One with the deputy fire chief, one with a firefighter (Angela’s dad), and one with a firefighter/paramedic.

We set our cameras up in the garage and had the interviewees sit on the back of the firetruck. It gave a really cool backdrop and added some interesting colors to the shots. After minor technical difficulties were resolved, the interviews went really well. We got a lot of information about the specific jobs of the different ranks, and stumbled upon a few fires that we could use as our main storyline.

Day 1 of Interviews

This monday we went to the firehouse to start our first interviews!! When we showed up, there were only a couple of fire fighters there and only one able to talk to us.  After, we set up the camera in the control room which was extremely noisy, but had a great a great view of the fire trucks in the background. Our interview turned out fairly good, it was just a practice but it gave us useful insight for future reference.

Over the winter break, we are planing to sift through old fire fighter footage and get some more interviews. Hopefully we will find a string central story that will carry this documentary!

— Lisa:)

The Payayaya Sistahood

Here we are, period 6, sitting behind the computer on Mr. Alan’s desk. We’re papaya fruit by the way if you haven’t already caught on. We are all quite excited to be filming a documentary on the Walpole Fire Department this year. We will be starting interviews, you know, right after the chief finally replies to our email. Bribery may be needed to get some firefighters to agree to interviews, but luckily my (Angela Pyne) baking skills are on point.

My father, David Pyne, has worked at the Walpole Fire Department since before I was born. I grew up with my dad telling me countless stories from the Fire Department; some of them funny, and some them sad. Then around last spring the idea of a documentary on our Fire Department came to my mind. I was unsure of how I would film it, but was also very confident that it could make a great movie. Now here we are nine months later with Lisa Regan and I directing, Kristen Mich assistant directing, and an insightful documentary ready to be made.

Hopefully we’ll hear back from the chief soon, and we can get production underway! 🙂

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