My Facebook Live Experience
The idea was to attend an event and record it on Facebook Live. However, when I got there, I didn’t have internet connection and the wifi was poor. I proceeded to restart my phone to see if that would help but unfortunately, it didn’t.
I even tried to use my brother’s Facebook Live but the same problem occurred probably because the event was outdoors and service is always worse than indoors. I believe that I would have had better luck if I attended an indoor event but by the time I figured that, I had ran out of time. However, I did go to different indoor places that weren’t hosting events at the time (just my luck) and the same problem had occurred. The best I could do was to record an event using the camera on my phone and hoped for the best.
I was able to record the Youth Market event that takes place every Wednesday in Bedford-Stuyvesant from 8:00a.m. to 3:00p.m. on Marcus Garvey and Broadway. It’s where people go to buy fresh fruits and vegetables using many different forms of payment.
I initially approached the boss who was working at the table before I started recording and told her what about the assignment for class and asked her if I could interview her, a few employees and record everyone who was looking to purchase these fruits and veggies. The boss told me that she didn’t want to be on camera but she would allow her employees to be interviewed if they were up for it. Luckily, I was able to get two interviews.
I believe I could have done better with the interviews and had been a better camera-women. I believe because I had to be spontaneous without really thinking it through and because it was a recording I became really nervous and many of my questions were forgotten.
As I was trying to interact with the interviewees I kept having to remind myself to keep the camera on them when they were talking but I often got distracted just by looking around at everything they might have pointed to or caught my eye.
So at some parts in the video, they would be speaking but I would cut part of their face out then quickly adjust the camera to capture them speaking. Recording a public event randomly was nerve-racking and it’s something I will definitely need to get use to. Also, because the J train runs on Broadway where the event takes place, it is hard to clearly hear what the people I have interviewed were saying and pertaining to the audio, the dialect between us could have been a little louder or the people I was interviewing could have spoken up but I didn’t want to put the camera so far in their faces.
Overall, I would say that it could have turned out much better but it was a learning experience. I know what I need to work on when it comes to interviewing and what to watch out for next time. I just wish the connection wouldn’t have given me problems so this assignment could have been done correctly.
