B-roll Time

 Today I filmed my first real chunks of B-roll! I mentioned in an earlier blog about starting to film my B-roll earlier, but after I concreted my idea to the therapy and helper dogs, that B-roll I filmed of my cats was pretty useless. Anyway, I will be talking about how I filmed my B-roll for this interview today.

        Thankfully, when I made arrangements with Deputy Danielle, she told me she would be coming to the school with Olivia (her labrador therapy dog) today, Thursday, during the morning. This matched perfectly with my AICE Media class period time, so I told her I would be there. The only bad thing was that since it was an early release day, being the last day of school before our spring break, class periods were shorter, making my time with her, more cut down. Also, Deputy Danielle had told me that she would be arriving at my school around 30 minutes after my class actually started, making me only end up having another 25 to 30 minutes with her. 

        At 9, when she arrived at my school, she texted me and told me her location at the school since we had promised to keep in touch with each other that day. She told me that the kids she was going to go over to with Olivia were in the gym, so I should head over there. This already was very good news since a change of scenery and something more diverse compared to a classroom would make a much more distinct and varied B-roll. This was also nice, since most of the kids there were up and about playing and interacting with the dog compared to maybe sitting and working on something if they were in a classroom.

        Before filming anything, though, I made sure that all of the kids were safe to film as I know that sometimes certain kids don't have permission or aren't allowed to be filmed. Overall, I think the gym-filmed B-roll came out great! I think all of the colors and the amount of space I had for distinct angles, made it such a great opportunity that I think it came out wonderful. Apart from interacting with Olivia, you could also see a lot of the kids doing their own thing which made this whole collection of shorts feel like a comforting family.

        After around 15 minutes of gym B-roll, Deputy Danielle told me that she was going to head out from there because she had another classroom to get to. This got me super excited because I was going to be able to get a change of scenery that I so badly needed. After saying our goodbyes and starting to walk over to the next classroom, I made sure to film some B-roll of Deputy Danielle walking with Olivia so I could have some personal shots of the two of them as well.

        Once we arrived at the portable where the next classroom was, I once again checked that everyone could be filmed and then began filming the student's interactions with Olivia. These interactions were very wholesome and much more personalized since the classroom made for a more secluded and controlled environment. This allowed for more interactions with Olivia like the picture shown below where you can see one of the students holding onto the end of the dog's leash.

        Although this room made it a little harder to move around to get distinct angles and shot locations, I did the best I could and caught some very cute interactions such as the picture below where you can see the same student as above getting asked if he wanted to hold Olvia's leash. This sequence also showed how comfortable Olivia and Deputy Danielle are with the students showing the frequency of visits and the impact they have on the students. I even caught a short video of one of the students feeding Olivia some cheese since they were making some sandwiches before our visit.

Anyway, this is how my journey went today with the B-roll I had to shoot, and I think it's safe to say that this was a very successful first day of filming B-roll and a conclusion to my process with Deputy Danielle and Olivia. Thank you for reading!

-Dana