The Digital Media Center recently paired up with the Preparation Department to film a series of short five-question interviews that will be used in the upcoming exhibition Beneath the Surface. Over the last three weeks, we interviewed five experts on topics ranging from the history of the Coclé people of Sitio Conte and the excavation of the site in the 1940s by J. Alden Mason to the conservation of the objects used in the exhibit.
This was my first time helping with an exhibition project and it was a learning experience for all of us. We had to do a couple of tests to make sure that everyone looks and sounds relatively the same in the final product. Since the interviews will be viewed on vertically oriented monitors, we had to position the camera to shoot sideways. In post-production, we have to rotate the footage counter-clockwise 90 degrees to add the title cards and subtitles, and then rotate the final product back to its original orientation to upload on the monitors to go into the exhibition.
When we filmed Dr. Katherine Moore, we also filmed ourselves for fun. So here is a quick time-lapse of us getting all the equipment ready and then making a thousand minor tweaks until we had it just right!