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.