Nate & Kamara Talk About Movies – Nate & Kamara

Written by Kamara but it stands for both of us

Initially, Nate and I had wanted to shoot two short films within the span of 6-weeks for our senior project but, due to the uncontrollable circumstances of COVID-19, we had to reshape our project into something that we could do. At the same time, we still wanted to gain a deeper understanding of film, so we eventually decided to work on a podcast that we’d call Nate & Kamara Talk About Movies (because we’re not great at titles but also because it reflects the casual tone we were going for). The essential question that we tasked ourselves with answering was: How can we talk about, and understand, film? Over the course of six weeks, the essential question hadn’t changed, not even a little. I cannot speak for my classmates, but this project went surprisingly well, with little to no issue. I think the reason for this was because ultimately, the essential question could only be answered at the end, if at all. We would not know whether or not we were answering the question midway through, but rather, at the point in which all of our experience came to an end. Further, the question isn’t really one that has a concrete answer, as everyone experiences and understands art differently. Additionally, the podcast idea was very doable in this situation, which made it easy to do the project. I recorded my audio on my phone and Nate had a little microphone that he used to record cleaner audio (he used his phone for the first few episodes but it didn’t sound great.) The project was, on a technical level, very easy to do.

Nate and I didn’t do a gallery, but a pre-recorded presentation instead because we believed that, if we went through the entire senior project together, we should finish together too. We wouldn’t be able to convey the chemistry that we had together or the casual/relaxed tone of our podcast in solo presentations. Also, editing this video on zoom felt like cutting together a dialogue scene, so Nate and I still got to (sort-of) make a movie. Attached, however, will be a few links to episodes of our podcast if you want to listen to them.

For our podcast, we were influenced by the Karstcast and the Sardonicast, two film podcasts that have similar tones to ours. Nate read a lot of film criticism by Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael as well, whereas I watched a lot more YouTube criticism videos. These sources helped to form our podcast into something that was coherent but also helped to push us into our own voice/style as well.

For the physical recording of the podcast, we got onto Zoom and recorded our own audio on our phones (for me) or our microphones (for Nate). We would clap in sync so we had a point to sync our audio together, and then we would edit it in Garage Band or Adobe Audition. We switched who edited every week (I started in week 1 and Nate ended in week 6). For the pre-recorded presentation, we did the same thing, but edited it in Final Cut instead (and Nate and I both edited it).