Saturday, November 16, 2013

Elena Herrada's inspiring narrative

We were lucky enough to have 2 guests come along on our oral history outing: Jonathan Jones (from ISS) and Emma Garrett! We encountered some interesting difficulties today such as arriving at the Boulevard House (the site at which we planned to conduct the interview) only to find that the House was undergoing some construction which entailed painters constantly going up and down stairs as well as various other construction sounds that would interfere with filming. So we decided to change locations and drive to Elena’s house instead.

Elena’s house was a beautiful place filled to the brim with social justice literature and artifacts of Chicano history. Some of these are included in this post, such as the UFW poster that was actually given to her by Cesar Chavez! We began looking through more of her archive; however we did not scan anything today since we needed to focus on getting the interview done (changing film locations and setting up the camera/lighting etc. took up all our time).
UFW poster given to Elena by Cesar Chavez


After we finished photographing the Chicano ornaments in Elena’s home and settled down to begin the interview, my role as videographer began. This was a much simpler process for me because Jonathan and Ari had already done all the set-up of the camera and framed the shot perfectly so I just needed to check the sound and begin recording.
 Jonathan setting up the shot (white balancing)
Ari and Jonathan after they set up this very intricate lighting system

A few things to note about the video process:
·         Wireless Mic (I think this applies to any mic actually): make sure the interviewer knows not to touch it on accident. It might be a good idea to let them know that things like moving your hair or adjusting a sweater/shawl could affect the sound quality. It’s probably not a good idea to break the flow of an interview to say this (if it’s not a huge sound problem); it just might be a good point to mention before the interview begins.
·         Hitting the record button: Jonathan told us to keep the camera recording the whole time, even when we took short breaks to fix sound problems (the theory being it’s easier to cut the extra film than to recreate missed film).

All in all it was a very cool process! Elena was very comfortable in her narration. A few times her story got a little emotional but luckily professor Cotera had tissues on hand. Both Ari and I noted what a great storyteller Elena is; I believe professor Cotera only needed to ask one question to begin the oral history and Elena was on her way. She was also really flexible in her ability to take up right where she left off in the course of her story after a break. She also was able to manage the time frame of her story really well – being able to make it from her birth all the way to the early 2000s in the course of 2 hours. These were all areas that could have posed potential difficulties; however, Elena was so skilled at telling her story that we did not have to worry about any of these and the interview came off without a hitch.
Elena telling her story 
 The oral history crew
Filming
I also really enjoyed hearing Elena Herrada’s story. Her oral history was particularly interesting in that it shed light on matters relating to the Latino experience in Detroit. She emphasized how the experience of Latinos in Detroit was different than elsewhere and told one-of-a-kind stories about Chicano-Boricua studies at Wayne State (one of these stories will be included in Ari’s post). It was informative and inspiring to hear Elena’s ‘counter-narrative’ of her experiences fighting systems of oppression. It was awe-inspiring to listen to both what she had gone through and the audacious acts with which she responded to troubling situations in her own life (such as suing the city or organizing a union at the age of 18).

This is definitely an oral history you will want to see the rest of (coming soon to a Medici near you!)
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We don't have scanned files yet but we do have the beautiful pictures from Elena's house:




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