Starting to edit (again!).

Last Tuesday (6th May) began the editing process again. I imported the clips onto Premiere Pro which took longer than expected, then I sorted the interview into bins, so when I was going back to each clip, it would be a lot easier to find it. So Tuesday was more of a logging and organizing day for me.

Wednesday afternoon (7th May) after another class was when Caoimhe joined me and we started clipping and cutting pieces together. We're both really happy with the footage and the way it's visually told on screen that it sometimes kills me having to cut something up, even though I know I have to do it due to time constraints.

We have a lot of information from Richard's interview that we can't all possibly fit in to five minutes which is a shame but as we were editing, we decided to try and keep in the information about parmesan cheese in because we are assuming that most of our audience don't know that this particular cheese isn't actually vegetarian, despite restaurants serving it as vegetarian. We want our audience to walk out of the audience finding out something new, and we think this will do the trick.

We also have some really nice shots of Richard talking about the Vegetarian Society and labels on food and as I was shooting this on the day, I moved in to see the labels and it auto-focused for me. We're using these shots because the audience will be aware of the different types of labelling in stores and we think it's something that some people may not be aware of.

On the Thursday (8th May), we showed Sharron our rough edit and I would say she was quite pleased with it. Caoimhe and I came up with some other titles because we personally didn't feel like "Green Beans and Everything In Between" fitted the documentary anymore. These titles were "Suitable for Vegetarians", "Vegetarian Options Available" and "A Vegeducation". However, talking with our tutor, she thought the title added quirkiness to the film and if we made the start quite quirky too, it would fit in quite well. We also had a lot of footage of Richard talking about the cheese which I didn't really mind but after our tutor telling us that the audience may start to think the film is about cheese, we thought it was best to cut it down but still have an appropriate amount of information still in there so the audience can understand why it's not vegetarian. 

Because of other on going projects during the week, we know from Thursday, we will not get any time to do another edit or go out filming apart from possibly next Wednesday afternoon so we do intend on editing more next Thursday (15th May) during class while the tutor is going over other people's work. 

Extended Research.

Over the month of April, I went vegetarian myself, to see what the life of a vegetarian would be like, the food challenges they face and the questions they were asked. Because I was only doing it over a month, I probably got more questions than your average vegetarian who had been doing it for quite a while, would get within one month.

My family questioned it and asked me why and when I explained my reasoning behind it, they were considered that I would have even less to eat because of the amount of foods I already have to take out of my diet because I have to live a gluten-free lifestyle (which I have talked about briefly before).

I got a lot of questions from my friends in class, and some weren't so much questions, more questioning why I was doing it. A lot of it was joking and usual class antics which I didn't mind; if I said something was wrong with me like I was tired or something along those lines, someone would say "well that's what happens when you're a vegetarian". Of course I know these were all jokes and I'm totally fine with that, I didn't get offended, this was part of the process that I wanted to explore while going vegetarian. I got told a few times that "we all need meat, it's essential" and because I wasn't 100% on the nutritional benefits on eating meat and not eating it, I couldn't exactly agree my point to its full potential. However, I did have my producer on my side the entire time, chiming in and defending vegetarianism whenever she could. Even though she wasn't doing the vegetarian month with me, she also feels quite passionate about defending vegetarianism because we feel that it is criticized too much and for no good reason.

With coursework and filming giving us hardly any time to do anything else, I didn't feel I had the time to fully prepare for my vegetarian month, which is a shame, because if I had've prepared, I think I could have made some really nice recipes throughout the month. I had beans on toast at least every other night, which could really boring, really quickly. I still ate my salads with either pasta and quinoa, I just didn't have meat in them. I never ate a heavy meat lead diet so nothing changed dramatically, but when I was missing meat from my plate, I just added more vegetables or side salad. Most of the food I ate regularly like fruit, vegetables, porridge, milk, beans, bread, muesli and smoothies were already vegetarian, so as I said before, I didn't have to change anything too dramatically.

It was quite an eye opening experience; with the comments from family and friends, combined with looking at the back of foods (more than I already have to) I was surprised to see what foods were and weren't vegetarian. I did slip up a few times during the month but with the same food; I had a milkshake a few times during the month with mini marshmallows and all three times, I ordered it, drank it and only after I had drunk it that I realized that I shouldn't have had the marshmallows. Normally I would have given up at that point but I wanted to stick with it because it wasn't a huge slip up, and it was a learning curve for me too.

I'm really happy that I went vegetarian for the month. I learnt a lot more doing it in actuality then just reading about it online, I was able to experience first hand some of the questions Richard had been asked before too, and I was able to discover foods that I thought were vegetarian but weren't, and vice versa. It really helped me understand my subject more and I wouldn't rule out being vegetarian in the future either.

Richard's interview.

On Saturday 3rd May, we finally had Richard's long awaited interview. I went to Tesco the night before and bought quite a lot of food to have in the background including pineapple, apples, coconut bites, peppers and almond milk as well as having bananas, strawberries, pasta and melon in the house already.

In the picture above, we set everything out on the cooker to have in the background of Richard but once we actually had Richard sit down, we realized that the food would look much better on the right side of the counter, so everything was moved to there and then Richard was re positioned.

Both Caoimhe and I think the interview went really well, much better than Lindsey's had went before. We took our tutor's advice and changed angles every few questions so when we came to editing, we had a number of different shot variations enabling us to cut in between different questions if a certain answer was spread out within other questions. 

We're both really happy with the day and we can't wait to start editing!

Meeting Richard.

In our fifth meeting, Caoimhe and I met at the Linen Hall Library once again (Monday 24th March) and met with Richard, our second and final vegetarian that will be appearing in our documentary. He was really laid back, was pleased with the questions and actually gave us another question we could add, regarding Christmas dinner. Both Richard and Lindsey had spoke briefly about not having enough choice in restaurants over Christmas, so that question will be a nice add on.

Then in our sixth meeting on Wednesday 26th March, we went over our possible shooting dates as well as our pitching process. We had the idea of making t-shirts for the occasions and bringing in vegetarian food and vegetarian beauty products to show our tutor that we were expanding outside the food region a little.

Second Meeting.

In our second meeting (Wednesday 12th March) we looked over the research resources I had received the week before as well as reply to two responses we had received that morning. We also wrote up a short letter to politician Jim Wells because we found out that he is vegetarian himself. We haven't currently sent the letter yet because we have had quite a few responses so we were using that as a back up plan but we thought it was a good idea to write it up anyway.

Things people say when you tell them you're a vegetarian or vegan.

The Vegetarian Belfast Facebook page posted this article up this afternoon and it is something along the lines that I would like to ask my interviewee. It's an article about the questions both vegetarians and vegans both get asked when they tell people about being vegetarian or vegan.

One of my questions will be "How did people first react when you told them about your lifestyle change?" and although it's not the same question, it's very similar because I imagine some people's reactions were along the lines of the questions in the article.