in terms of the subject matter, the interview with mr. goldstein was interesting because it was great to hear a government official talk directly about issues that don’t neccessarily get touched on. in particular, i was interested in hearing where the advertising money goes. the gps / credit card machines in nyc cabs now have the capability to display ads on their screens. it was not clear who directly benefits – the medallion owner, fleet owner, or machine vendor. it seems like it’s simply a means of reducing costs for the medallion owners as they pay less money in leasing fees on the machines if they agree to have ads on the screens.  Yet from a taxi driver’s perspective, they could care less because they still pay a 5 % service charge with every credit card swipe.  And the cabbies aren’t particularly happy about hearing the same ads cycle over all day.  One person I spoke to, Bill, joked about how “these are the same people who had recorded celebrity voices – including Elmo – telling passengers to ‘buckle up’ every time they got in the cab.  It drove cabbies nuts.”  Can you imagine hearing Elmo say “Buckle Up For Safety” over 30 times a day?  yikes.

just from a filmmaking perspective what i find amazing is that everytime you turn off the camera people say far more coherent and interesting things than when on-camera. on the one hand it tells you just how practiced some folks are at acting ‘natural’ when on-camera. on the other, there must be filmmakers out there who have some amazing techniques that get people to relax.

there’s also the fact that i didn’t notice the subject’s lav mic wire had come out from behind his tie and was dangling across his body. yikes. during the interview i was just concentrating on asking the questions, listening to his responses and going with the flow of the conversation. then, after looking at the footage – wham – there it is. it feels like such an amateur mistake. and who wants to make amateur mistakes? grrrr.

that being said, i’m going to go over the footage again tonight. b/c i know the wire wasn’t visible the entire time, so there must be useful segments in there.

Last night, Monday, October 15th, i attended the Leo Awards – a ceremony run by the Flaherty Seminar.  I was also there to shot photos for them.  Jon Alpert, longtime documentary filmmaker and director of Downtown Community Television (DCTV) won an award, as did Mable Haddock, formerly the director of the National Black Programming Consortium.  unfortunately she was not able to make it, but her college Jackie Jones, the current director of NBPC, spoke on her behalf. photos will be posted in a few days and linked to this  entry.