Battling The Backlog

Battling the Backlog is an unofficial title to a documentary some of my classmates and I are producing as our senior project. In short, it is about the backlog of rape kits. We've been doing interviews since February and principal photography is soon coming to a close. I've never worked on a documentary before, so this is a new and very different experience for me, especially as the editor of the film. It is going to be very difficult to put together the best story out of what we have and what to use as B-roll and when will be a new challenge for me too. So, I'mexcited to see how it turns out and where this film goes. In the meantime, we just finished shooting an interview at The Joyful Heart Foundation in New York City.

New York marks the third state we've had interviews in for this documentary so far and was the first time I've been to Manhatten. Working on Tiger Lily Road, we did a shoot in a convenience store which was terrible for audio with all the refrigerators and freezers making noise and the owner not willing to shut them down. So, I asked the sound guy if that was his worst location for sound and he responded saying "No, any New York City street is the worst." So luckily for us, we were in a quieter part of the city and were indoors on the 4th floor, so it wasn't as bad as it could get, but boy, was it tough for sound. Cars honking, people yelling, and construction vehicles beeping, etc. You cant tell them to stop and it's a new source every sound. We had a shotgun and lav mic going, and fortunately for us, that lav mic did a great job of ignoring the background noises as much as it could. Lighting that tiny room was the most difficult part about the shoot. We knew where we wanted the lights and we got them as close to there as possible, but we really couldn't get them right where we wanted and the light intensities were not quite where we wanted them. Overall, solid shoot though.

A trip to the Law and Order SVU studio and the most expensive slice of pizza I've ever seen completed our day in NYC, and we're hoping for another interview before we start really putting this together in post.