Nomalanga, the Nomad.: May 2012

1. Filming Nomalanga proved to be challenging due to the fact that she is a very busy individual. She is immersed in her community work as well as in her work as a Shoreline presenter. Nomalanga had to leave to go and film for Shoreline for a while when started the project, so we had to ensure that we had everything filmed a while before the project was due. She also oftencame late to our appointments to film and we then had to cram our filming in, so as not to run out of light.This proved to be slightly stressful due to the fact that we were restricted for time with her schedule.

Photographs of Nomalanga's childhood also proved to be hard to get. She was not sure where her childhood photos were, and when she came across some she had very few to share. We were unable to get any of her at Epworth which is a bit of an issue. This is due to the fact that Epworth was an important aspect of her life and opened her up to the one side of her life, namely the urban, middle class life.

Another difficulty with our filming was that we struggled to show aspects of her being an in-betweener without it looking too staged. We had ideas about her walking through the streets of the community and then through the streets within the urban area but these would have seemed to forced. We therefore found it extremely difficult in how we would portray her "in-betweeness."

Our sound also seemed to sound slightly "muddy" in the interview with "X."This wasn't a major issue as our sound was more or less perfect with Nomalanga, but at the same time the differences in sound made for a disruption of smooth flowing sound.

Another issue was that often the mood was disrupted as there was a mic rumble or talking in the background on the camera. She is not the only person in her hosue so filming her there meant that tehre was great possibility for this. Disruptions often lost the mood of the conversation and for visual shots also limited us to what we could use to ensure that there is no harsh background sound like wind or talking.

I was very unsure in how to approach Nomalanga. I found her quite intimidating, simply because she is such an outspoken and wellknown person in Grahamstown.I was worried to say the wrong thing around her or offend her. I found it nerving with what questions we could also ask her in the interview.

2. The way we worked around her busy schedule is that we constantly checked her schedule and sent her reminders about our appointments. We prepared ourselves for the fact that she was a busy person and booked time to film her far in advance of the due date so as to avoid last minute panic. When she was late we also made use of the time by interviewing her husband.

Nomalanga eventually found a few photos of her childhood, which proved positive. Something is better than nothing. We still do no thave any pictues of her at Epworth but we do have of her graduating at Rhodes, which we found also represents her "urban, middle class life" experience.

In terms of the "in-betweeness" we managed to try and portray this as much as possible in her interview which acts as the narration. We got soundclips of her explaining her "in-betweeness." She speaks about both sides of her life and overlapping visuals of Rhodes and the department of history, as well as her in her home in the community and her interaction with the children in the community will help to further show the "inbetweeness".

We rectified our sound by using ambience sounds in the piece to smoothen the transition between Nomalanga's interview and "X's" interview.

Disruptions in the interview were managed quite well by us, because we pre-warned Nomalanga about the fact that interruptions and disruptions may occur. To avoid wind rumble on outside shots we tried to guard the directional mic with our bodies. We also tried to film bits when the wind died down. Any other disruptions were just cut out and we redid the parts that were to disrupted to use.

With regards to managing what questions we could ask we decided to use disgression by notifying her what our questions covered and the topic areas that we would be interviewing her about. We then asked her if she was comfortable with these questions and asked her to sign an indemnity form. In terms of approaching Nomalanga it seemed easier that we did not try to say too much as she is a very talkative individual and has a lot that she wants to say. Letting her talk allowed for her to get across alot more personal and in-depth viewpoints and information that we might not have been able to get otherwise. Therefore, the feeling of intimidation worked in my favour.

3. I felt that I learnt alot from this project. I was able to do a story on someone who is both actively involved in the community and successful in her career. I found this particularly amazing as it is not often that one can have both, but it proved to be possible. It was also nice to get an angle into someone elses life who has a completely different childhood upbringing to me, and that being her rural upbringing. I thought that I was going to be so different from her but at the same time I saw alot of similarities in her life to mine. Many of her experiences, such as moving around and going to many different schools were things that i could relate to and it was interesting that I could share so many similarities with someone who has a very different cultural and linguistic framework to my own.

Technically, I also learnt to handle the microphone better for improved sound. I felt more confident when I was listening to the interview sound whilst filming. I also learnt a few things from my partner who showed me a few different techniques such as "the rule of thirds", which i was not taught this year due to the fact that i missed the bootcamp where all the other tv students learnt this technicality.

I also learnt how to get a good interview flowing. Using the suggested methods for a documentary interview from the lecture assisted in the interview being well-prepared and at the same time very personal and in depth.

I also learnt to improve movement without having to pan, tilt or zoom. I think the extensive filming that we put into this piece allowed for me to get greater practice and i was able to learn how to "pull-focus" and how to do great deal of static shots that told a better story than camera movements.

4. Next time I would do more shots to set the scene. I felt that our piece lacked the ability to show the two places in which she is inbetween. I feel that the space of the story is extremely important and these establishing shots can add a lot of meaning to the piece.

I would also like to ensure that the interview with the interviewee is not so long. Long interviews when there are time limits can prove to make editing extremely difficult and one becomes too focused on trying to cram all the information in, when sometimes less is more. I would like to get more audio of the individual doing things and talking next time, rather than just the static still images of her sitting and getting inerviewed. I felt like this was definitely something that can be cosnidered for future projects, so as to ensure that the story does not become boring.

KIRSTEN ALLNUTT

Nomalanga, the Nomad.

2012-05-25

Documenting Nomalanga

In the Flesh. Well... Almost.

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