A New Experience

Thursday and Friday were a completely new experience for me. We were interviewing and filming the patients I mentioned in my post last week about What's Real. I learned I'm pretty good at interviewing. The hardest part for me is that I couldn't make verbal or auditory cues, like saying "Oh" and "Mm hm" while they were speaking. We're editing out the questions altogether, so all you'll hear is the person's story. I gave a lot of thumbs-up and big smiles. And if they said something particularly funny, I had to do a silent laugh! I wanted to encourage them and make them feel as comfortable as possible to tell their story while being as quiet as possible. I almost felt like I was doing charades.

After our first day of filming on Thursday, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much! I also found that I was completely exhausted. I went to bed at 8:30 (which I never do) and slept soundly until the next morning.

Each of the people we were interviewing aren't actors, so everyone was nervous in front of the camera with the hot lights and many production people in the room. I tried to make each feel comfortable and let them know that their unique story is important and inspiring. We got some incredible footage -- more than we had expected -- and the clients were thrilled.