Filming Karima Francis
We were really pleased to be asked by our lecturer on the Online Media unit to help with filming and interviews at the Karima Francis performance at The Joiners on Sunday 8th February 2009.
There was plenty of work to be done. First we had to organise all the equipment and transport it to the venue, which involved borrowing a car from a friend. Before the performance we needed to set up early and re-arrange the dressing room into a more appropriate setting for the interview with Karima. We had prepared our questions based on a briefing by Chris Stemp, the Joiners' promoter.
I asked the questions and helped with the filming. We had three cameras altogether, which meant that all five of us from the Media Culture and Production course each got a chance to take charge of one of the cameras for one of the bands.
Initially we were only planning on filming the first 3 songs but Karima felt it was going so well that she asked us to film the whole set, which meant rushing around to get more tapes and batteries at short notice.
Her performance was mesmerizing. It was an acoustic, very mellow show. Everyone in the crowd was just watching and listening to this beautiful music she was playing. It was one of the best, most moving performances I have ever seen.
It was a really good gig. Everyone was listening and the atmosphere was quite intense. While Karima was at the Joiners she received a phone call from BBC Radio asking to interview her. In the meantime her track 'Again' has been featured on iTunes as single of the week, Radio 2 is A-listing the track and her video has been shown on E4, so her music career is definitely rocketing.
We filmed the whole set and interviewed the artists after the show. Nick Jewell , who is a final year film student, acted as our mentor, giving us lots of useful advice on filming. He also did the editing to produce an excellent video (see below). We learnt loads, in particular several different camera techniques and I really look forward to being able to help out again in future to get even more experience. There are already plans to film the Red Light Company when they play at The Joiners.
I'd love to get into a career which involves media and music, so filming and interviewing Karima gave me a great taster of the sort of work I might do in future.
Interview with Karima Francis Video