FINAL Film + Website

https://jpereznogueiras.wixsite.com/rduncovered

Why looking ahead is important

Last week, I was supposed to film my final interview with two people that were with Sebastian when he first came into contact with the parasite. Unfortunately, due to uncontrollable circumstances,that interview was not able to happen. So, we decided to move it to Tuesday of this week and do it right after school. 

All went well and there weren't any problems with getting the interview set up. Everything was running smoothly. However, a few minutes into the interview, it dawned on me that I wouldn't be using a single clip from this interview in the final piece. I realized that I was digressing too far from the central topic of the documentary. Rather than focusing on the disease itself, I was placing too much emphasis on Sebastian's story, which is only really meant to be more of a personal anecdote about the disease and the rare possibility of curing it rather than a full narrative. With this in mind, I thanked the interviewees for their time and, once home, got to work reorganizing the excerpt in my head, this time placing extreme focus on the disease itself.

Going beyond the documentary itself, I want to complete the poster and website within two days, hopefully by Friday, in order to give myself a lot of breathing room for editing the film piece. The overall focus and tone of the poster and websites will be outlined in a later blog post. 

Second Interview: Mrs. DeLeon

Soon after Sebastian's interview, I had an interview scheduled with his mother for when she came back home from work. As I had not been to the DeLeon household before, I really had no idea where I would be filming, so everything from lighting to composition had to be thought out on the spot. In Sebastian's interview, I really liked how the camera was framed, so I decided to do another interview with the subject in the upper left third. However, I wanted the interview with his mother to be a bit more formal but be in a setting that naturally exerted a feeling of "family". After all, Mrs. DeLeon would without a doubt in my mind have the most heartfelt interview as she had to cope with the near loss of her own kin. To do this, I had the interview set up down in the open, rather than Sebastian's interview which was done in his room.

With the setting chosen and the questions prepared, all that was left was getting through the interview. Unfortunately, this had only been the first time that I had ever met Mrs. DeLeon and therefore did not have nearly an intimate of a relationship as I did with her son. I was honestly afraid the interview would suffer from this as she would not feel as comfortable opening up to someone who was practically a stranger to her. Thankfully, I was completely wrong. Every answer given was rich with detail and emotion. I also gave myself the liberty of creating some questions on the spot, as a sort of response to the statements Mrs. DeLeon was making, essentially turning the interview into more of a conversation as time went on.

The only real concern that I had was, like in Sebastian's interview, the lighting. This interview was done at night, so there was no worry about the Sun creeping into the frame and letting the image become overexposed. However, the DeLeon household has a lot of lamps and as a result created a lot of awkward shadows, no matter where the camera was. With a bit of experimentation, the lighting was fixed and looked very good once opened on my computer. All that is left for filming is the B-Roll and the interview with the two girls that were with Sebastian when he had jumped into the lake.

First Interview: Sebastian DeLeon

On Monday, March 26th, I completed my first interview. This time, it was with the surviving patient of the brain eating amoeba that is the focus of this documentary excerpt: Sebastian DeLeon. Now, before filming, I had arrived at his house at around 2 PM and began filming around 4PM...real productive, I know. However, since Sebastian is a friend of mine, we spent the extra time we had on our hands discussing what my vision for this documentary was really supposed to be. I believe that having this conversation beforehand was actually crucial in keeping Sebastian levelheaded and clear-minded during the course of the interview. 

Since I do not have a camera setup of my own, I had asked a friend of mine to lend me his camera in order to film the visuals of the documentary. So while I was chatting up Sebastian, I began to toy around with this camera, sort of getting the feel for it before putting it to use. As for the setup, I'm really happy with how the interview came out. I was originally really concerned with the lighting, but luckily, right before we began to film, a cloud actually came and blocked some of the bright sunlight, providing a much cleaner image. Also, I was also borrowing that same friend's tripod. However, I have had plenty of experience with tripods before so it was a piece of cake to set it up, and the framing of the image looked beautiful, with DeLeon sitting comfortably in the Upper Left third with just enough head room.

All in all, the interview went really smoothly and it had just what I was looking for in my interviews. It had also been a long time since I was truly behind a camera and it felt really good just to get back into the rhythm of the film-making process.

Interview Questions

For my documentary, I wanted it to be primarily driven through the interviews. As a result of this, I knew I had to create a set of questions that I would be asking the interviewees. Here was the final list I came up with to use while interviewing: 

1. Can you tell me what you were doing the day you first came into contact with the brain eating amoeba?
2. What happened in the time right after you jumped into the lake? (According to the news sources in a previous post, Sebastian came into contact with it after jumping into a lake).
3. What were the doctors saying before and after you were diagnosed with the parasite?
4. Do you remember the medical procedures you had to go through?
5. What happened when you woke up and how long was it before you back on your feet?
6. How do you think this event has impacted your family?

Obviously, these questions are written as if I were speaking directly to Sebastian but they will have to be modified to fit the grand total of three interviews. I have decided that for the interviews, I would place the story in chronological order, which sort of falls into a three-part story arc: Before Sebastian contracted the parasite, when he contracted it, and after it was cured. To fit this story arc, I have set up three interviews: Sebastian, his mother, and two people that were with him in the near hours of him contracting the disease. Through this many interviews, I hope to have a lot of footage to fill in the time.

Late Post

Sorry for missing the last week of submissions. To sum up the time lost, I basically researched about Sebastian de Leon, what the disease was, how he contracted it etc. 

Apparently, the disease is so rare that it is twice as likely to be struck by lightning. As a result, I believe that I figured out what I would be doing for this project. I wish for this TV documentary to be a part of a series that focuses on rare diseases that are found around the world. I will be going through the overall outline of this TV series in a later blog post.

Also, I have looked through various news articles that talk about Sebastian's miraculous survival story, including big names such as CNN and ABC News. What's interesting about how these two sources presented the information is that CNN almost exclusively focused on the disease itself while ABC allowed for a more in depth look at the overall story. Both, however,included a video report of the lead medical examiner that saved Sebastian's life. Due to both sources including clips from this interview with Sebastian's doctor, it can only be assumed that this has been a medical breakthrough, especially since Sebastian has come out of this relatively unscathed. I have linked both sources below:

CNN Link
ABC News Link

Ask and you shall receive

When I was at my lowest, most desperate point for new ideas, an idea was presented to me in the form of my friend Andres. Now, I've known Andres since around 6th grade but we had only just begun to hang out in recent times. So when it dawned on me that Andres had just solved all my problems about this project, he really surprised me. It was like a miracle.

A miracle who went by the name "Sebastian de Leon".

Sebastian de Leon is one of the few people known to have survived a (insert deadly condition here...I'll ask him more about it later on). Now, I've also been good friends with Sebastian for a while so I had heard about his miraculous story. But when Andres suggested that I throw away my idea about collective identity out the window and replace it with Sebastian's story, I knew it had to be good.

Quickly thanking Andres, I ran outside and called Sebastian, who I knew was at lunch at the time. We begin to talk and I pitch the idea to make a small documentary about what had happened to him. To my surprise, he was extremely excited to be a part of my piece and he said he would be glad to help me.

I don't have much outlined for the piece but I have a good feeling about it. I feel like it could be one of my best pieces to date--if I play my cards right. I'll update this blog as more developments are made for this new documentary.