Roxanne Miller’s Blog

I have wanted a video camera for such a long time.  As a fan of good storytelling, I have been curious to see if I could learn to tell the stories that matter to me.  But the cost of the equipment has been holding me back from following through on my dreams and taking it up as a hobby.

Last summer when I was in Tanzania as a Kiva Fellow, I got a crazy request from the Director of PR.  She needed me to film a Kiva client for a story they were doing for The Today Show.  I had to see if I could find a camera, buy some film and find Rehema Hamisi and interview her.

It was a tough assignment for me.  I had never really held a camera and had to do some google searching to try to find the basic instructions.  I knew to hold the camera still and try to get the sun in the background but that was about it.  I totally had to wing it.  Somehow I managed to pull it off and capture enough good film that it was used in the story.

I have to tell you I was so excited when I got this feedback from Amy Unell, a producer at the Today Show:
“THE FOOTAGE LOOKS AND SOUND GREAT!!!!
Rox Star – I’m dying to know, what do you do when you are not doing wonderful things in Tanzania?  You’re a great journalist!”

My response at the time was :
Amy,
Thanks for the wonderful compliment..you made my morning!  When I was growing up I always told people I wanted to be Jane Pauley…so I’ll have to forward your email to my mom
Outside of volunteering for Kiva I have worked in marketing at Yahoo! and will be starting bschool at Berkeley in the fall. Long-term I want to start my own socially-responsible business.  At home in SF I Tivo lots of news shows…so maybe all those years of watching 60 Minutes and Dateline have helped me out.
Thanks again for the compliment and it’s been a pleasure working with you!
-Roxanne

Between you and me, I don’t watch Dateline, but I felt like I had to say that since she was from NBC.

But the whole experience had really left me wanting to learn more!  I was so frustrated when I was filming because I knew I wasn’t doing a great job, but I didn’t know what to do to make it better.

Lucky for me, today was my day to learn what to do. Larry Warner, an accomplished documentary filmmaker and photographer who films for CBS news programs like 60 Minutes and 48 Hours, trained me in documentary filmmaking techniques.  Yes, somehow I lucked into getting trained by a guy who works with the team at 60 Minutes.  Wow, I am so, so, so LUCKY.

This wasn’t a one-on-one training.  It was part of a larger training on story telling that the Blum Center put together for this year’s group of Blum Fellows.  There were 25 of us there soaking up everything that Larry was dishing.

Larry was AMAZING.  He is such a PRO in the business. I learned all kinds of things.  For instance, for every scene, you should get a wide show, medium shot, close-up and cutaway. If there is sound in the background, you cannot turn on and off the camera, you have to keep it running while you are moving so that you can edit the film together later without having to cut all the noise.  I learned how to compose the picture, how close a real close-up should be, how to fill the frame and most importantly how long to hold a shot.

As part of the training we did a group project. I worked with Will, a graduate student at UCSF and the School of Public Health, who will be going to Bangladesh to work on arsenic education and Priya, an undergraduate Peace and Conflict Studies major, who is going to Congolese refugee camps in Tanzania.  Amazing stuff.

When Larry critiqued our film, it was clear how much practice I was going to need to even get close to right.  Although the Blum Center is furnishing most of the teams with cameras, I’m determined to find a way to buy my own.  I want this project to be the beginning of my efforts to start capturing stories on film.  I want to practice before I get to Uganda. I want to try to film as much good stuff as I can so that maybe we could put together a mini-documentary when we get back.  How cool would that be?  SO COOL!

So now I’ve got my work to do.  I want to watch a bunch of documentary film or news reports with my new found knowledge.  I want to learn by what others do and I want to practice filming stories before I go.