Interviewing for Documentaries pt 1

Preparing for the interview

It may be one of the longest conversations you ever have with someone. You’re sitting on a chair, hidden behind lights, expensive equipment on either side of you. You look through the haze of three-point lighting and try to gather your thoughts. You shuffle your notes, look deeply into your interview’s eyes and give them a big smile.

If you clicked through from social media and haven’t done it, why don’t you click this button and make it official:

I interview Shelby Jewel Stephyns for my documentary Queen of the Capital. One of my former students monitors the audio.

Most documentaries we watch have at least some type of interview. It can be a quick, informal setup, maybe interrupting your participant as soon as they finish what they’re doing (In TV news we called these active interviews), or your interview could be a formal sit-down with thousands of dollars of lighting, an interrotron and a make-up team.

There are some types of documentaries that don’t have interviews. If you’re doing a true observational documentary, also known as Cinema Virité you probably won’t ever do a sit-down formal interview and you may not interact with your participants at all. If you’re doing a reflix documentary, you might be on camera as well as your interviewee. A poetic or experimental documentary? Your interview may not look like any interview I could think of.

Most documentaries are somewhere in between expositional and Cinema Verité. In most docs we do some formal and some informal interviews. In this post, I’ll focus more on formal sit-down interviews because they take more time to prepare, set up and conduct.

One thing I want to point out first is that there is a trend towards relying less on formal interviews and more on informal for film-festival documentaries. This is reflected even in the most formal interviews because the formality is not as obvious (this could be the use of natural light or unique framing). It seems like screeners are more interested in this look, so if festivals are your goal, go light on the lights.

Prepare! Prepare! Prepare!

I know this sounds obvious, but I feel like I need to say it. The first thing you need to do is prepare. You should research the people you’re interviewing (you probably already should have). Pull any newspaper articles from your interviewee, check out their social media, watch any videos about them.

We jumped into our first set of interviews without properly preparing. Most of them went fine, but one of the people we were interviewing could tell we didn’t know what we were talking about and gave us one-word answers.

I also try and visit the location to see where we’re going to interview. I check for any audio issues like a loud air conditioner or highway, note the lighting conditions, and look for where I’m going to set up the interview. I like to take photos if I can.

1. Listen for audio issues.

2. Look for lighting conditions.

3. Take photos.

Questions

Interviewing for documentaries is different than interviewing in any other journalistic format. It’s an extended conversation where you try to talk as little as possible (hopefully the person you’re interviewing is doing all of the talking). You have to make the person you’re interviewing feel at ease while they’re being battered by lights, sitting in a chair that’s probably not that comfortable.

I personally use notes when I interview, so a big part of my preparation is preparing my notes and coming up with questions. I want to make sure I don’t miss anything. That said, when I’m doing the interview, I don’t strictly follow my questions, I just use them to make sure that I don’t miss anything. You also shouldn’t read directly off of your question notes, glance down at them to jolt your memory, but make sure you’re making eye contact.

I’ve found there are four different types of questions (Well, two questions and one statement):

Simple, Open-Ended Questions

This is the foundation of broadcast journalism. In TV news we used to avoid yes or no questions, focusing on questions that prompt soundbites more than one word long. Asking someone if they did something does not elicit the same type of response as asking someone why they did something. I always like to try to avoid having my voice asking a question in the finished product so asking open-ended questions is a good way to avoid that.

Asking the how and why will get much better answers than just asking who, what, when and where. You don’t want to avoid those questions, there’s just a better way to ask them which we’ll get to in a minute.

For more observational documentaries, the how is important to get on camera, because it’s what we’re going to use to move the story along and give it structure. Having your interviewee walk you through on a granular step-by-step level will give you the soundbites you need to build edit documentary and keep the story going.

The why is important because it’ll get to the emotion of the story. Digging down to the feelings behind the how will keep the audience engaged. It’ll give you the tools you need to connect with the viewer and make them empathize. The why is what we care about.

Some “why” questions:

• Why did that make you feel that way?

• Why did you do that?

• Why is that so important to you?

Non-Question Question

We’re trying to hold somewhat of a conversation, so not everything you say will be a question. We should throw in some statements here and there. Keep them short and pointed. This will get you some really interesting answers, but if you’re not careful it could be a little too leading.

After a decent answer you can state the obvious and you’ll get a good soundbite after it, for instance you can say something like “That must have been devastating” and they’d respond with something like “It was devastating, I sunk my whole savings into bitcoin.” “That sounds like a fun group!” and you’d get a response like “They are. They’re the best students I’ve ever had.” Keep your statements short and to the point. Focus on emotional points

Double-Barrelled Question

This is my favorite type of question, and it’s something that took me a while to figure out. When we’re editing a documentary, we prefer that our interviewees talk in full sentences, but as someone doing the interviewing, we never want to ask people do that. Can you imagine how awkward it would make you feel if someone said “Can you repeat that in the form of a sentence?”

There’s an easier way to get your interview to speak in complete sentences, the double-barreled question. A double-barreled question is when you ask two linked questions at the same time. If you ask them both at the same time, they’re more likely to answer both.

The first question should look for a one-word answer and the second should be a follow up. The most basic version of this is “What is your name and what do you do?” If you just ask “What is your name?” you’ll get “Josh Davidsburg,” but if you ask “what is your name and what do you do?,” chances are you’ll get “My name is Josh Davidsburg and I teach documentary production and journalism.” If you ask “How did that make you feel?” you’ll probably get “good” but if you ask “How did that make you feel and why?” you’ll get. “It made me feel great because it was the first time I’ve ever won anything.”

Parting Tips

A few things to remember when you’re conducting an interviw

1. Shut up! Don’t talk over your participants. Don’t say “uh-hu” while they’re talking. If you’re talking or making noise under soundbites you won’t be able to use those soundbites.

2. Shut up! When your participant finishes a thought, don’t jump right in and start talking. If you leave some awkward silence, then the person you’re interviewing will feel the need to fill it. You can get some really good soundbite from sitting and staring at your subject after they stop talking. Maybe cock your head a bit, raise your eyebrows, but don’t talk. I’ve heard it called it a “pregnant pause.”

3. Shut up! Don’t forget to get roomtone after or before your interview. Roomtone is a couple minutes of the sound of the room when no one is talking. It’s absolutely necessary for editing. An editor will use roomtone to fill in the gaps in between edits so it sounds more natural.

What I’m watching:

I’m preparing to show Boys State again in class. This is my favorite documentary of the last few years. Here’s the logline:

This raucous journey into the heart of democracy captures an unusual rite of passage: 1,100 teenage boys from across Texas coming together to build a representative government from the ground up.

It’s such a fascinating look at American politics framed through a camp about mock elections.