We had spoken to Jen and Mike who were keen for HWGM to do something for the project, so we were thrilled for the chance to come up to the cabin where they were rehearsing to do an episode, and also thrilled that they’d be covering one of our favorites, Gillian Welch…we love plugged in sessions though they are unusual for us. Generally a full band always presents different challenges from a single camera shooting perspective, trying to capture the different moving pieces, the interplay of players, but at the same time can be a bit freeing if I know we’re going to be going off the soundboard audio in editing, so where the camera gets to point doesn’t have to be as constrained by thoughts of balancing and the camera’s directional mic. When you’re shooting I find your ears tell you where to point the camera as much as your eyes, but it’s a different experience with it happening all around you, with more inputs and active thoughts compared to when you sit down and look at the shots with the audio mix in editing. It was charged and beautiful the sound in there, but it was as I was watching it in post, seeing everything all together that I got a renewed appreciation for what they had done, the artistry of it.

Some editing choices come easier than others, but the easiest ones are when you’re watching something, any moment, and you get chills. Sometimes my head hasn’t caught up and I can’t put into words why a love that particular moment or inflection, but by now I’ve learned that it doesn’t have to, to just trust the fact that my skin knows what it’s talking about. Watching this back, I think it was the second time, I got chills, but in this case it wasn’t for a particular moment, inflection, expression, movement or interaction, one note that rang particularly true, but rather it was in seeing the totality of what they were all doing. Overdriven but combined with gentleness and a delicacy that seems to brings a euphoria to Gillian’s theme, listen to this one with earphones and get lost, it’s one of those you just want to keep going… — Anna