Update!

It looks like I'm not the only one who kind of completely forgot that we're supposed to keep updating this blog! I'll make up for lost time with an enormous post detailing my progress on my second multimedia project about Metropolis Coffee and their bean roasting!

I had a really great time working with Tony Dreyfuss and his employees at the roasterie in Andersonville (a cute, Swedish neighborhood nestled in between Uptown and Edgewater). Tony was super friendly, talkative, and excited about my project, so that made it even more fun to work with him. We played voicemail tag for about a week, and then last Tuesday I went over to interview him and shoot a little footage of the coffee bean roasting. He gave me a tour of the roasterie and explained everything in detail. Unfortunately, I didn't have the camera turned on for the preliminary walk through, and by the time I finished interviewing Tony, the roasters were done for the day.

Lucky for me, I got the chance to see them doing a taste test of a sample roast! In addition to my interview with Tony, then, I got a lot of great footage of the guys at the roasterie slurping and spitting different coffee samples to determine which bean they might want to roast next. After they made their decision, Tony insisted that I try the slurping and spitting too, which was fun but also a little humiliating because I ended up salivating all over my chin, hands, paper cup, etc. The things we do for stories!

I went back to the roasterie on Thursday to shoot some footage of the actual roasting process. I was glad to have had the personalized tour on Tuesday because I knew which shots to look for. I got a lot of footage of the roaster, the testing, the bagging for distribution, etc. UNFORTUNATELY, right as the beans were dropping from the oven into the cooling area, my camera ran to the end of the tape! I'm not sure if I got any of that action, although I sincerely hope that I did. I panicked a little bit and rewinded the tape to the middle somewhere and taped over some of the slurping and spitting from Tuesday (luckily, I had a whole lot of this footage--much more than I will need). I am nervous to see how the footage comes out when I put it onto the computer--I hope I have enough usable stuff! If not, I can always make another quick trip back there.

In other crazy news, the roaster was actually a little bit on fire when I taped the process. I guess it wasn't a big deal and they fixed it, but it was kind of a little bit of a disappointment because the roasters were too busy fixing the machine to really have time to give me an interview. It's okay, though, because my interview with Tony should be more than enough information to make a quality two-minute video.

I think that's the bulk of the excitement...sorry to have it all in one gigantic post instead of several little ones like I should have been doing all along!