Slater day 3

I called Slater on Friday to tell here what I wanted to film. I told her I wanted her to continue with her day as if I wasn't going to be there. She said she would be taking a nap. We laughed.

When I arrived she looked tired and said that she had had a long day. I got the camera out and told her that we would skip using the lav mic today. It usually is an ordeal to get it on her where it will be out of sight, then if it moves out of position we have to stop and readjust it. I didn't want to exhaust Slater.

There were painters painting the outside of her house which I thought was great. I even asked them if they wouldn't mind if I accidentally got them on camera and they said they wouldn't. Inside Slater moved into the living room and then said "well wait, do you want to go to the studio because the painters are making too much noise?" I told her that I didn't.

This was very telling. The idea of this shoot was that I film Slater doing what she would normally be doing. Since that was taking a nap, we had a problem. She was making stuff up for me. She took 2 things from the her do list and placed them in that time slot, 3-5, the time that I would be there. She does like to work with me, whether she likes my company or she likes being filmed or both I'm not sure. I don't mind reordering the schedule of her to do list. But I definitely didn't want her to go somewhere were she normally wouldn't work because she was worried about the sound I would be picking up. That would make us twice removed from what she would naturally be doing, on a day that I wanted to get observational footage!

We continued shooting her at an desk in her living room. Everything went well and after she got to folding roses out of pages she had taken from the bible it was obvious she was doing what she wanted to be doing in that moment. She was lost in her art. From there, she went out to the studio, I followed her and had taken off my shoes so my feet would have a lesser chance of being picked up by the mic. ( I hope that shot works out.)

In her studio I asked her a few questions and once I even asked her to repeat what she had just said because the mic was not aimed in her direction. I also had her stand in place for a minute while I got a different angle. I had wanted to stay in observational mode but had no problem jumping out of that in order to tell the story.

We finished at 4:20 and I think it was an efficient and productive day.