First Interview!!

I finally got to filming! Today, I filmed my first interview who works with a black Labrador who is a service dog. Anyway, this blog will be dedicated to this interview and how it went.

I was honestly very scared since I'd never talked formally to a police officer or been in a police station, but my fears were soon calmed down. The Deputy I was meeting with was Deputy Danielle Quinones. She was super nice and welcoming and made my fears immediately vanish. We went to meet the dog, Olivia, who was patiently laying on her bed in the deputy's office. She introduced me to Olivia and began asking a couple of questions about the topic of my project, why I chose this topic, and why I am making this project. 

After those simple questions, I told her my requirements and what I wanted in terms of noise levels, backgrounds, and whether I wanted Olivia in the shot. To those questions, I said that the quietest space with a background that indicates a police station would be ideal, and we headed over to the training room where she said it would be the least interrupted. She suggested, due to the noise, that Olivia could sit out the interview if I was fine with it, and I agreed since I would be showing her anyway in the B-roll overlaying the actual interview.

Once we got into the training room, I gave her the paper with all of my questions on it (which I changed a couple, so I added the newly changed questions below), so she could review them and come up with what she wanted to say ahead of time. 

After that, I asked her to go anywhere in the room standing or sitting, basically asking her to go wherever she felt the most comfortable. She ended up deciding to help me out a bit and said she wouldn't mind standing in the middle of the room with a wall in the background saying the sheriff's office behind her.

        The next step was to conduct the actual interview. It went very well in my opinion. It lasted around 8 minutes with me asking questions and her pausing to think for a second about certain ones. Sadly, I forgot to ask her to restate the question on some specific questions that kind of needed restating. So, since I noticed that I already left, I decided I would ask my second interviewee to restate the questions and use her restating and also apply it to Deputy Danielles'.

        She answered most of the questions perfectly; however, the only thing I would say is that on a specific question on how Olivia affects her life outside of her job, she kind of kept talking about her job and what Olivia does in her work line. Maybe, she isn't allowed to talk about her home life, but she didn't mention anything, so I'm not exactly sure.

        After our successful interview, she offered to give me a small tour of the building since the whole interview process ended up short. She first showed us the jail/holding cell room which was very interesting to see. She told us that most of the time, this wasn't part of any tours but since there were no inmates there at that time, she showed us in one of the cells and it was super cool to look at. She next showed us the evidence room that held a bunch of lockers, safes, vaults, and machines. It also contained where they held all of the illegal substances and anything they found on crime scenes, they put in the lockers. Lastly, she showed us the room where all the police officers check in in the morning and get their cameras and walkie-talkies since they're all mandated to wear and use both.

        Before leaving and saying our goodbyes, I made sure to get some pictures of Deputy Danielle alone and with Olivia so I could use some for my Instagram and my blog posting (this is when I took the first picture on this blog posting). Lastly, I made sure we were still good for meeting on Thursday at school while she helped some of the kids there. This was so I was able to film B-roll at a perfect time during my AICE Media class period and also get footage of Olivia working with the students.

        Thank you for reading and keep an eye out for one of my next postings which will cover my process on Thursday of getting all of the B-roll for this interview. Also, bonus picture on the right <3

-Dana