Production Diary 2 - Chinese new year activity

Today is the day before Chinese New Year, which is also important to us. As during this day, people will gather together and have a big dinner and people will watch the show on Television until mid-night that people are waiting for New Year's coming (usually people will not sleep on this day or they will keep waking until 12 o'clock is coming, which is the start of the New Year).

Today, although Chinese students like me cannot go home and celebrate the Chinese New Year with family, we have a small celebration with friends and teachers in the afternoon that we made dumplings and did some calligraphy work.

During the event, Melissa and I have also filmed some videos and took some photos. Also, we have filmed some interviews in two different angles.

Here are some photos that I took during the event. We used to decide to use two cameras (Melissa's own camera and the school one's), but because Melissa only got one SD card that we could only use one camera, I used phone instead.

Also, as some of them are videos, and I just get some screenshot of the video, you might see some irrelevant stuff.

This is the shot when Chinese students were discussing what should they make by using the rest of the dough (as we ran out of the fillings, but still have so much dough left, they start thinking about what should they make), during the scene, one of the Chinese student brought his phone and played some very Chinese New Year style song, which just fit the genre. They used to think about making noodles, but as none of us know how to made noodle strips, at the end we did not make the noodles.

This is the shot when students were making dumplings, one of the guy(in the middle of the scene) was kneading dough which is used for making dumplilngs.

Not only Chinese students came for this activity, but also some local students and other country's students came as well. They came for eating the dumplings. But one quite interesting thing but I fogot to film is that some of the students they don't know how to use the chopsticks and use them strangly and quite funny. 

This is the teacher who held this event, and she was the one who cooked the dumplings for us, and here is the shot that she was cooking the dumplings.

This is a close-up (a little bit not clear is because it is a video and when I got the screenshot it is not quite well) that students picked up the dumplings. In fact, here are some naughty boys who are copying how other country's students who do not know how to use the chopsticks do when they try to picked up the dumplings.

And here are those naughty boys

Here is the interview shot that this is the angle that I chose to interview. But problem is, as I was using phones for interview, and the music in that room is too loud, the person who was talking in my video might not be so clear. Luckly, I heard from Melissa that she said in her video (that she filmed by camera with microphone), the sound is fine that it is better than what she heard during the event. 

This is another student and another interview, in this interview, at the start, this student was looking towards to me, but after a while, as Melissa started asking question, she turned to her sight. And one quite annoying thing is that, when I was filmming, Cynthia was distracting me! So in this interview, mine might not be so well.

This is the shot that my Chinese teacher asked me to took for her.

A close-up to dumplings

When I just randomly filmed, these students looked here and I just took it

This is the photo that I caught up when he is eating the dumplings (well, I think I might get trouble......as it is quite funny)

this is when students were practising their calligraphy on the sheets which by using water and the writing brush(as the words students written would disappear after a while and others could rewrite again)

Someone drew a pig as this year the animal is pig (quite cute!)

Another shot of people practising. One sad thing is that as there were so many students writing on the sheets, it is hard for me to get a good point of view shot of how they write a complete word (but I saw Melissa have filmed herself of writing the word, so it may not be a problem)

In conclusion, even though I couldn't celebrate Chinese new year largely like I have done in China, I still had a great fun in that afternoon and also I have got some good photos and videos as well!