Once again, we found ourselves walking around town, interpreter by our side, in search of more pieces to our stories.  Video camera in hand, tripod locked under my arm, it’s possible I at least looked like I knew what I was doing.  I followed Rosemary into Raffaello Disgusteria.  “Giournaliste?” Apparently he had a buffer of another interview with someone from the program.

Luckily, he was ready for us, but now my comfort zone with video technology was definitely about to be breached.  Really, it was the tripod’s fault, or that of whoever broke it without telling me.  To begin with it was way too short, so as Rosemary was breaking the ice with the shop owner, I was in the background moving a stool into the right position; setting up the tiny tripod.  The problem was that the top piece wouldn’t fully screw on, so the camera was tipping without my help.  Once I realized it was fruitless to have it stand alone, I decided  just to hold it up with a firm grip, pressing it down onto the insecure tripod set up on the wobbly stool.  I soon realized I couldn’t do this the whole time.

However, the camera was attached to the top portion of the tripod, which was curved and on a hard surface that  allowed me to find angles, so I moved over to a counter and got some slightly sturdy shots of the shop owner’s nose hair.  Progress.  I felt my inner McGyver coming out and looked for some resources.  First, I noticed shelving for honey jars, but it was too complicated.  Of course my next, and obvious thought was to stack the honey jars.  This was about two, maybe three times worse than the broken tripod on the stool so I went for the tallest honey jar.  This was my final, and most successful tactic.

I packed up my “equipment” from the “video” I just shot while Rosemary wondered if she had asked enough questions and whether she had left anything out.  I was useless, I had no idea what just happened and was really trying not to break the camera.

As we were leaving the shop, the owner told our interpreter to say goodbye to Fellini for him.  I felt like taking a bow as I walked away from my filmmaking debut.