And on the Third Day...

Suddenly the weekend was upon us and the festival proper began, my energy levels already having been depleted enough from the full days previously on the Thursday and Friday. But I arrived on Saturday keen to get back into the swing of the filming I had been doing the previous day.

 My first filming session for that day was at the Bendigo Bank Theatre in The Capital, my first one I filmed in that theatre for the festival. This session did have Jackie French in attendance once again, as she talked about gardening and the ways in which one could build and maintain one. There were some interesting thoughts that were brought up during this session, it definitely being one which I did enjoy listening to, despite gardening not exactly being something I’m too interested in.

One of the other sessions I went to that day also to film was the session about Greece and people from there who have moved to Australia. It was quite interesting I felt to hear these stories of their lives and having to adjust to the differing lifestyle of the countries.

Of course, doing the filming was what I was concentrating a lot on during the festival so at times I may have missed parts of the session. Despite what you may think with advancements in technology, doing camera work for these kinds of events isn’t an absolute breeze. For each session I would have to set up the camera on its tripod and make sure it was level, while also making sure the camera wasn’t too high or unstable.

Next up was getting the audio cable connected to the camera from the audio guys who were controlling the microphones of the guys talking and performing for the festival’s sessions, something which ended up being easier than I thought and also helped a lot with making the sound quality better. The camera I had did contain a microphone, except it was only really barely adequate if I were to describe its quality.

And of course lastly was getting the camera powered up and then getting the shot set up liked I wanted. That’s when I would hit the record button and let the camera do what it was designed to do. Though even after starting to record the sessions, I would still not be able to leave the camera alone, as I would have to adjust the microphone levels for the voices of the people speaking, so as not be too loud or too quiet. This could be a pain at times, as some voices would end up being louder or quieter than others, so a compromise would have to be made. I would also on occasions during the sessions move the camera around on the bipod to get different shots of the people doing the talking.

Overall I would say that the Saturday of the festival was a fun one for me, and certainly did take a lot of energy out of me with the amount of running around I did for the filming. But I did also learn some interesting things about what writers do, such as how some prefer to have meticulous planning for stories they write, whereas other do better with barely or no planning at all.