Week 15: Shooting footage

This week our group has begun shooting footage for our solar energy project. Our content development group is creating videos for the Kukui Cup Dorm Energy Competition. We've interviewed Deans, homeowners and solar companies to find out about photovoltaic solar panels. Over the course of our filming and research we got some really interesting material.

The first interview was with Associate Dean Bill Chismar of the Shidler College of Business. He graciously talked to us and gave us a lot of insight on the PV panels installed on the BusAd building. I also got my first experience with interviewing someone on video. I was kind of nervous, but I found that I just needed to stay focused and maintain my eye contact. You never think about it, but videos require people to act very slow and calm. If you move your hands a lot or move very erratically, it can become distracting. The footage was good and we also got pictures of the panels. The only challenge we had was the rushed schedule. We got a message for an opportunity to talk to the Dean and we had to figure out very quickly whether we could do it. We were grateful for the opportunity and so needed to get things set up ASAP. I thought we did great with the time we available to us.

On our second shooting day, we went to a Sunetric open house at Hawaii Kai. We talked a Suntric representation and the homeowner that was trying to sell a home that had PV panels installed. What's amazing was that she had installed 24 panels on the roof and it was enough to offset all of her eletrical usage. Her electrical bill from HECO was $18 just as a base charge for using the electrical grid. One of the challenges in interviewing at this site was that we didn't know what to expect. We didn't know if the people there were going to agree to being interviewed and we were lucky to get the amount of footage that we did. The homeowner and representative was so forward and willing to talk about the topic of PV panels. Since they were so willing, it was very easy for us to just listen to what they had to say.

Overall, our efforts this week has been in coordinating our shooting project and getting everything ready. The people we interviewed were really giving and willing to share what they know. I learned a lot about photovoltaic panels and the information about using them. A lot of the insights we gained were somethings you couldn't learn from straight research.

For the coming week, we'll work on putting the videos together. From the amount of material we're thinking about making a few videos out of the material. We'll need to write a script with some commentary about what photovoltaic panels are and how it works. This way the audience will know what it is before it suddenly jump to the subjects we go into. I think people watching the interviews are always going to have the question in the back of their minds if we don't address what photovoltaic is.