Conversations on Cultural Identity with Julia Jalyschko Prep

I am doing another shoot tomorrow with Julia Jalyschko, a friend of mine, for another episode of my series of Conversations on Cultural Identity. I am really looking forward to it as we haven’t chatted much about this topic before other than briefly discussing her heritage of being born and raised in Germany to Russian immigrant parents in casual conversation.

I think this shoot could be really interesting and another very different story to tell in my series.

Speaking to another person about this topic is really exciting and I am really looking forward to seeing how it turns out as I really don’t know where the conversation is going to go.

Again, Julia is quite nervous to be in front of the camera so again, I am really trying to reassure her that it is just a casual and comfortable conversation and that she is welcome to not answer any questions or not speak on anything she gets uncomfortable about.

I think ensuring that your interviewee is comfortable is really important and can make or break a filmed interview like this so I am nervous that this could be a hurdle that I will have to overcome.

With regards to location, I did originally plan to do the shoot outdoors with Julia due to social distancing and lockdown rules, however after looking back at the rushes from Max’s shoot, I thought that this wouldn’t really work very well and therefore spoke to Julia about what she would be comfortable doing, whilst maintaining as much of the lockdown rules/precautions as possible.

So, we have planned to do the shoot in a well ventilated room and that I will keep my mask on for the whole shoot. I am worried that this will hinder the natural tone of the conversation and that it could cause a barrier between us, but this is something that will be important to test as it seems that wearing masks will become much more common practise in the workplace in the future.

I have planned to use very similar question prompts with Julia but I want to ensure that the conversation stays natural, like usual, so I will only use these if I feel that I need a new ‘topic’ to speak to her about. Between questions, I think it has been really beneficial for me, with Ruby and Max’s shoots to really give the time to reply and give my personal response to what they have just said to maintain a dialogue between my interviewee and I as, obviously when I am filming them, I am not able to make any sounds of agreement etc. which could potentially feel unnatural for them and create a sense of uncomfortability.

I am really excited to see where the conversation takes us and looking forward to experimenting more. Again, I would like to take some polaroids to try and experiment with this.