In the real world of documentary interviews, you’d prepare very carefully for even a short interview. You’d do research to prepare for your interview. You’d have a pre-interview conversation with your subject. You’d spend a lot of time on choosing your setting, planning the shot composition, and lighting. You’d develop a very clear plan – a line of questioning – for the interview. You’d need to have your subjects sign a permission release before you started filming. And you’d think carefully about your setup.

Alternative setups:

Stripped down – the solo filmmaker: You set up the camera on a tripod and adjust the image and focus. You put a mic on your subject and test the sound levels (perhaps with a lapel mic and a shotgun mic on the camera). Then, once you are rolling, you ask the questions, checking on the camera and the audio as you go.

Two person team (a much better approach): You have a camera/sound operator – someone to wear headphones and monitor the audio levels while watching the camera to make sure the framing and focus work well.

Three people – now we’re getting professional: A camera operator, sound person, and you, the producer asking the questions.

And for this assignment?

Our goal in this exercise is modest: to become familiar with the process of shooting an interview before asking someone whose time is valuable.

For this exercise, you should shoot two interviews of at least two minutes each (and at least three questions each). When you are done, you will share with me both files as mp4s or movs – and be ready to point to 30 seconds that you’d like us to watch together.

INTERVIEW 1. Sit-Down Interview

Set up your interviewee for a sit-down interview. Find a good spot for them. Look at the light (you’d like to have good illumination on the face). Sit your subject in a firm chair (one that doesn’t swivel). Move them forward from the wall (or whatever background you have in mind). Adjust the lighting so that it is neither harsh nor flat. Set up the camera on a tripod. Adjust the tripod to the right height and lock it down. Compose your shots. Wire the subject with a lavalier mic, with the cable out of sight, or a shotgun mic. For these interviews, you should try to get good sound. Leave camera on the tripod. And ask your subject a few questions. While you are shooting, you might try slowly zooming in on the face of the subject (to see how hard it is to do this and make it look good). In practice you will typically cover any readjustments (focus, framing, zoom) with b-roll or a jump cut.

Ideally, you’d shoot with a camera and a lapel mic. If you are scrambling, I’m happy for you to shoot your interview on a phone.

INTERVIEW 2. Action Interview

Many doc makers have moved away from the sit-down interview. With wireless mics and image stabilization, it is easier than ever to follow someone around while they’re doing something and record their story. For your second interview, follow your subject while they do some kind of action – they could be gardening, flipping through old letters, walking in a graveyard, working at a desk, etc. You could wire them with a wireless lavalier mic or use a shotgun mic. If you only have the on-camera microphone, see if you can set it to a narrow sound pattern (some cameras have adjustable patterns), so that it works as a shotgun mic. Ask a few questions and follow their answers. Before you are finished, shoot some B-roll footage, video footage that you might use in editing, to intercut with the main footage of the interview (say, to cover over visual tics or zooms). This might include: the subject in the setting, doing whatever they are doing, a closeup on the hands, establishing shot, etc.

Again, in an ideal world, you’d shoot with a camera and a lapel mic. If you are scrambling, I’m happy for you to shoot your interview on a phone.

Guidelines for a Good Interview

What I haven’t talked about here are some of the things that make for good oral history – and good interviews. Some brief guidelines:

– do your research so you come to the interview with knowledge to follow-up on your subject’s answers.

– you need to have prepared a line of questioning, to know what you are looking for.

– let people tell their story. Don’t lead the witness (or badger them). Do feel free to ask them to say more or to dig deeper into a story.

– use visual cues – head nods, facial expressions – to show you are listening rather than sounds. We don’t want to hear your voice on the audio outside of the questions.

– ask people to repeat their stories when necessary (but the retelling is often less convincing than the first take)

– keep yourself out of the story (unless you’ve made a creative decision to put yourself in the story)

AND A NOTE ON SOUND

Getting good sound in interviews is absolutely essential. What are we here for if not to listen? We’ll spend some time working on this – and work in more detail. For now, some first ideas:

– use a lavalier mic if you can. Plug the lavalier mic into the MIC input on the camera. Turn on the mic – which sends power to the microphone. Note: on some cameras, you need to go into the menu to recognize the external mic for audio input. Tap the mic and watch the mic monitor to make sure that you are delivering a signal, if not you might have a dead battery in the mic, or you might not have the camera set for mic input. Be sure to turn off the mic when you finish to save the battery for the future.

– alternatively, you can use your smartphone as a recording device with a wireless cavalier mic from Technology.

– an alternative is to use a shotgun mic. 

– And note: in a professional world, with two channels of recording, you would use both a lav and a shotgun)

– For many cameras and mics, you can adjust the direction of the on-camera mic – so that it will be more narrow, like a shotgun mic, or more wide like a omni-directional mic.

– make sure your equipment is ready to go, with fresh batteries, turned on. (And don’t forget to turn off when you are done).

– monitor the sound output with headphones or earbuds to get the sound levels right.

– you can set the audio levels to AUTO if you are shooting alone. The advantage is that the camera will take care of sound. The disadvantages is that the camera will constantly adjust recording levels to maintain constant levels (even during silence). If you are just doing camera and sound you should set the audio levels to MANUAL. You would then listen in with your headphones, adjusting the gain for strong sound levels without clipping.

– test everything before you do a real shoot.

TO SHARE YOUR INTERVIEWS

If you are working in iMovie, you can follow these directions:

• Import your footage into IMovie, in a new event entitled “[subject name]-interview-[date]”
• Create a new project in IMovie. Insert the footage from your interview into your project. Editing is completely optional.
• Export your project to a movie file (Select: Share/Export Movie…/Medium Size), named “[your last name]-interview1[or 2]” and save to your OneDrive space. Then share the file with me and post the link in Moodle under this week’s assignment.

We’ve also talked about a process that would work for the future for bigger projects:

• Save your media to an external SSD drive
• Import footage to DaVinci Resolve
• Export to a YouTube channel – as a private, unlisted video
• Share the link to the YouTube video

SOME ADDITIONAL DETAILS

Who should you talk to? And what should you talk about? For this exercise, feel free to do anything you like. If you have an interview that works for your final project that’s great, but optional. I’m not worried about the subject matter, but I am looking at the setup, the shot composition, and the sound.