Scofield Stories Episode 6: The WC Sessions

Scofield Digital Storytelling excels at making human interest videos. When the shelter in place order occurred, it became clear to me that communicating on Zoom or other video conferencing apps would present a new video making opportunity. With the inability to schedule normal shoots, things like Zoom offer the ability to interview people anywhere virtually and record the interview.

When a fellow musician friend sent me a video he’d uploaded to a Chicago area site called The WC Sessions where people record music from their bathrooms, a video story was sparked. I wrote to the site founder, John Petitt, and asked for permission to interview him and key site participants. John was all for this and I was able to interview John and five other site performers who were regularly submitting performance videos. 

The idea of playing music in a bathroom goes way back before recording when musicians enjoyed the reverberation sound quality created by the tile room. Most notably John Lennon and Paul McCartney would compose early songs while rehearsing in Paul’s childhood home bathroom. Countless musicians have recorded sound styles while setting up mics and instruments in the WC.

I learned quickly that Zoom interview quality varied from subject to subject. Picture quality was inconsistent, but in every case the audio was good enough to be equalized along with adding video color correction while editing in AVID. Often there was frame lag throwing off the lip-sync but it was easy to re-sync the chats. Since all of the performance videos appeared on Facebook I was able to screen capture the Facebook entry with performer information to use as a framing for the live video performance captured by pulling that off of Facebook.

What ensued is a 4 minute video that I feel captures the fun and lightness that playing on the WC Sessions site offers for participants and viewers. The performers consistently were challenged to set up their phone angles for a correct recording not to mention the pressure of getting a performance right. The spontaneity of doing it is the fun part, as I learned personally when adding my own song.

I hope this video demonstrates that we can still make compelling video stories without being in the same room with interviewees. In fact the opportunity to reach out to more subjects virtually to capture a story is very compelling. Although video conferencing technology is limited, video stories still ring true with limitless chances to capture the unexpected moment.