Revelations of Interviews for Films

So i was reading about capturing moments in films and I must admit that this step-by-step guide gave me a whole new perspective and set of skills for filming. I think as a film maker, especially for observational documentaries, it is so important to build rapport with all your interviewees. The whole process can almost take a long time before they’ll actually open up to you and give you what you want. Likewise fo us, our initial idea and goal was to passionately represent public housing in a positive light and we wanted the tenants themselves to have a voice and speak up about their emotions and thoughts and memories. But we definitely had a lot of problems trying to create the right transparent setting where our interviewees could be comfortable and “free” to express 100%. So after reading this short passage online, I guess it’s an idiot proof passage but for all of you film makers who aren’t skilled at communicating and interviewing. This could be the remedy!

It starts:

The memories, stories, and traditions of the people you interview grow out of firsthand knowledge and experience. Created and shaped in community life, they are continually being adapted and changed to meet new circumstances and needs. When interviewing members of your family or local community, be sure to seek out not only what they can tell you about the past, but what they can tell you about life in the present.

I liked how they gave a few thought provoking questions and it honestly hits you in the head. Do reflect upon these questions because they’ll definitely come in handy if you’re interviewing someone. Think about the past and present, your audience demographics and what wouold they desire to see as well. All of these obviously comes with a little planning.

How have certain family traditions evolved? What holiday customs are practiced today that weren’t a generation ago? What special foodways and rituals are part of community celebrations and why? What skills and abilities are needed to practice a particular craft or trade? How are these skills learned, mastered, and passed on to younger generations?

Whenever possible, ask the tradition-bearer you are interviewing for stories and anecdotes about the topic you are interested in. Stories are important sources of information for the community researcher — they encapsulate attitudes and beliefs, wisdom and knowledge that lie at the heart of a person’s identity and experience. Remember that the stories and memories you collect are valuable not necessarily because they represent historical facts, but because they embody human truths — a particular way of looking at the world.

What I liked about the tip above is that, you’ll never know by doing so! You could get inspired by your interviewee and he/she could help you formulate the angle and structure of your own film. And i believe as people start to share their stories, more emotions could be captured and wouldn’t that be great?

As Ann Banks writes in  First Person America,

“The way people make sense of their lives, the web of meaning and identity they weave for themselves, has a significance and importance of its own.”

The stories people tell, and the cultural traditions they preserve, speak volumes about what they value and how they bring meaning to their lives and to the lives of those around them. Every interview that you do will be unique. We hope the advice and suggestions offered here will help you on your journey of cultural discovery.

Remember to capture the different colours and styles and personalities of all your interviewees because it’ll make the documentary more lively and it’ll seem like you have a million narratives to entice your audience. And keep in mind to NEVER state your opposing opinions whilst you’re interviewing someone and they’re sharing so openly about their story. RESPECT! It’s THEIR story and you chose to interview them for a reason. UNLESS its a certain style of documentary which involves your rebuttal and feedback. Go ahead but do so sensitively.

Getting Started
What is the goal of your research? What are you curious about? What do you want to find out? Do you want to learn about a special celebration in your community? Document traditional customs in your family? Find out what it was like when your mother was growing up?

The best way to begin is to decide on the focus of your interview. This will determine whom you choose to interview and what sorts of questions you ask. Having a clearly defined goal is key to conducting a successful interview.

Once you’ve determined the focus of your interview, then what? Whom should you interview first? You might want to begin by thinking about yourself and your own interests. What sorts of questions would you like someone to ask you? What kind of responses do you think they would elicit? This will help you prepare for the interview experience. If possible, try to conduct your first interview with someone with whom you feel very comfortable, such as a close relative or a neighbor you know well. Over the course of the interview, you’ll probably pick up clues to other sources: “Aunt Judith can really tell some stories about those days,” or “You should ask Antonio Martinez — he’s the real master.”

What if you don’t already know someone to interview about the topic you are interested in? The best way to find people is by asking other people. Chances are you know someone who knows just the person you’re looking for! Friends, neighbors, relatives, teachers, librarians, folklorists, and local historians can all help point you in the right direction. Local newspapers, community bulletin boards, and senior citizen centers are also good sources of information.  The interview should take place in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. The home of the person you are interviewing is usually the best place, but there may also be other settings that would be appropriate, such as your tradition-bearer’s workplace, a church hall, or a community center.

Productive interviews can sometimes take place at regularly occurring events, such as family dinners, holiday celebrations, and work gatherings. These are often the occasions when stories are told and traditional customs observed.

The above par is also really crucial and i emphasize on the word recurring because sometimes, or rather, most of the time. Recurring visits and interviews could help you dig out more information about your interviewee’s life. They could have recalled more information and by that time they would have felt more comfortable and probably will be more open to share even infront of the cameras and crew. Put in that effort and if time allows it, build relationships as it’ll benefit your film and give you contacts for your topic.

Hope this was helpful! Credits to folklife.

Heaven: A Short Film (Sound definitely has a huge impact)

This has got to be one of the cutest animated short films i’ve seen. I think what really appeals and stands out are the minute expressions and micro movements from the Angel, as well as the good pacing of the instrumental track. For instance at 0:50, the sudden pause of the instrumental track complemented the mood and expression of the animated man who was awaiting for his approval to enter heaven.

In addition to that, the beats and tempo of the tracks and sound effects also gave great perception and sense of interactivity and relevance for the audience in my opinion. I would term this as “conversational mood sounds”, as it highlights and reinforces the appropriate emotions and feelings one would gain upon watching the film. I think the soundscape has effectively delivered in this area.

Next, I also think that the screenplay writer and the illustrator of this film did a great job in brainstorming for the colours used as it was aesthetically very pleasing. The ideas generated in the film were also very interesting and refreshing, it was definitely something original in terms of the animated and outcome context. Taking the concept of “meeting the criteria to be selected into heaven”, “angel vs devil”, “good triumph over evil ultimately”… All these concepts were played around with and the mix was very balanced and intriguing to watch:)

 

Hope you’ve enjoyed the film<3

 

John’s Interview and Another Bad Technical Day

Okay so this interview did not turn out as smooth as we wanted it to be and i swear it was so nerve wrecking! It was partially our fault and responsibility as well so the story goes…

We always checked our gear before renting it and the camera was fine and perfect, sound was also great! ALL WAS PERFECT. But! When we were setting up, all of a sudden! We could not record and we tried changing the settings etc. It was apparently on another camera profile that was in chinese, all hell broke loose thereafter because we could not film and thank God John was really patient and flexible in rescheduling. However, we felt so bad and tried to resolve and work around the situation.

We reset the settings, reformatted the card, turned the z7 on and off. We even called the techs but nothing worked. In the end we played around with some other settings and we could start recording! AND THEN!

The sound messed up! No levels were showing while recording and Lupita could not hear any sound through her headphones and on the mixer no levels could be picked up. We reset the mixer and replugged the sound wires but everything was futile.

Some solutions:

1) Come back another day to shoot.

2) We could use our DSLRs but sound would have been a problem.

3) Shoot cutaways first and come back another time

We definitely had a rough start because though we managed to get the camera working and we swapped to the in built camera mic, the quality would probably be different and editing was going to be another hassle. And low and behold after reviewing the footage, the colour and quality was bad. the sound levels were alright but probably needed work in post production because the levels were low and the sound was a tad muffled up.

Other problems or happenings:

We wanted to get cutaways of John visiting the hospital but due to time constraints and also due to the concerns of not being prepared, we forgo that thought. We did manage to get pretty good cutaways of John’s art and his house but again quality was a little upsetting after reviewing our footages. What was good about John was that he can get repetitive in some of his answers, but he has alot of passion and his tone used covered it up. He evoked the right emotions with the use of his words as well and we definitely had anger and disappointment coming from him.

 

 

The Kids: Our Cutaways

         

Okay so for our documentary I realised we needed to have like gazillion cutaways to show this huge topic of public housing. We went back a couple of times hoping to get loads of cutaways of kids but on some days it got  alittle disappointing because there were no kids! But nonetheless it was all about the process and we tried to make our trip down fruitful. In documentaries choosing the right cutaways and getting the right sound in the spur of the moment was a challenging task as well as there were not much room for mistakes.

Like for the cutaways of the kids, we had to know how to handle the kids as tried making weird funy faces, we tried talking to them, we tried plying with them… Sometimes nothing works and it was hard trying to get our ideal planned shots. I guess this is why planning is such an important aspect for your cutaways because it eally saves so much more time and for a documentary like ours, we needed to know specific schedules like…

The children’s playtime, the time where all the mother’s gather with their kids, what time are their classes at the estate community club… There were so much more details to be looked into but we sort of power through and managed well. This was a great learning experience and I finally understand why it is important to plan and select your talents. identifying your talents and choices of cutaways is also crucial because it can set the tone and mood of your documentary or destroy it.

Other cutaways which we struggled alot with was getting observational cutaways of our interviewees (especially the adults) because of time contraints and schedules. Hence we had to make a number of trips back to the Northcote estate to get different cutaways to cover up the overload of information and narratives from the adults’ interviewees.

Another pointer to note is something not crucial as of yet but I guess for huge topics that are ongoing like ours, I feel that building rapport is something really important at the start. We’re almost done with 4 interviewees and we’ve been getting more and more content and responses only because we kept on communicating with our contacts and the kids. We played with them, talked to them, and got to know all of our characters and interviewees better, hence filming was easier and more flexible whilst our director gave orders and duties.

So far everything has been smooth in our 2nd week of shooting and we’ve been having a bit of a problem trying to structure our documentary as we had an overlap of information from some interviewees. So next step would be to nail down a draft fine cut, and maybe we’ll have to re-plan a template for our flow and order of sequence. Another update: we have yet to nail down a government figure to balance out our film as well so fingers crossed we’ll ba able to do so soon!

Some other cutaways to enjoy:)

 

 

REVOLVING DOOR: Another Documentary

Kate & Jeremy Dixon Interview

    

Okay so its the second and third interview we’ll be doing! Once again Manal our awesome producer got us this interview. Kate is an independent running in the Melbourne Council Election and she’s also one of the prominent active public housing advocates in Victoria.

WHY WE CHOSE HER:

1. She was a credible and articulate talent and she has extensive experience and knowledge about public housing, its policies, people, support groups, laws, government, politics etc.

2. She’s also a public housing tenant which makes her really reliable and her honesty will hopefully be reflected realistically on film. (We had the goal of capturing emotions out from her as she is a mother herself and she has her own worldly worries of being evicted and higher rents)

3. She’s talented and skilled in interviewees. I think this boiled down to the idea of having professional interviewees as compared to unprofessional ones.

Kate stood out alot in this aspect as her answers were very wise and concise, with impact and emotions. Her choice of words and her phrasing was also really commendable as she was an interviewee who needed no prompting and i must say everything with her went so smoothly. There was a part in the interview where she got emotional and cried as well and it was awesome for us to slowly discover the realities of the fears and concerns of the tenants so we’ll definitely explore this angle and touch on it.

WHY WE CHOSE JEREMY:

1. Kate recommended Jeremy because of his active status as an advocate. And he was a tenant himself for years hence we were anticipating his story.

2. He was very knowledgable in technical aspects and could add information to our film.

Jeremy was not a strong character piece because he could not narrate his own story as a tenant and he was not trained as an interviewee as compared to Kate, hence we might not use him in the documentary as a character piece but definitely as an informative piece because he was really knowledgable about the laws and policies of public housing and KPMG. Due to his own time constraint and schedule, he could not stay on for long as well hence the short and abrupt interview, and we could not get any personal tenant stories.

     

 

Okay so we met another obstacle on set:

We wanted to film the window as a cutaway because of the colours and the pictures and artwork of her kids. However it was seriously overexposed and after adding filters and all the shot was still really ugly. We’ll probably have to edit it in post but point to note! Adjust white balance especially if the sun keeps shining brightly on and off.

 

Other Progress Updates:

Our questions are currently all too informative and technical to the extent of fears that our documentary will be a tad boring because we still haven’t gotten a strong character/family to follow around. There wasn’t much emotions or complementary cuts of our interviewees’ lives as well and hence this is a worry and obstacle the team anticipates and we’ll be planning more shots of kids in the next interview.

 

Rough Cut Feedbacks

Okay so these were some of the common gathered feedback from the rough cut session.

1) Paul hated our blacks and suggested that we used cutaways of the estate instead. However, Taylor loved the blacks and felt that it complemented our opening and the voiceover from Anton (our interviewee).

2) Subject topic was great but needed governmental figures since it was a huge social topic not only in Melbourne but in other parts of the world as well

3) The kids added alot of flavour to the documentary and they wanted to see more kids

4) Structure of film not strong enough (A story flow not established yet)

5) Sound levels in between cuts unclear and could be raised. Sound overlaying the blacks has to be raised.

6) Need more insight to the kids lives and their future

7) Enjoyed the different opinions from kids and the adults

Robin said that something is still missing. The main element of this film is still missing and we need to build our cut without caring about the nig nags like sound and cutaways first as our structure is still not established.

Things to work on:

We needed to have more cutaways of the tenants and their houses. We’ll need to go through most of the interview footages as well and pick only strong materials that would have impact on the setting of the documentary. This meant strategic planning of who we want to use and who we want to completely scrape.

Interviewing Process (DOs DON’Ts MAYBE’s)

Interviews make up a great deal of the storytelling process in documentaries. Always think about your background and setting, watch the lighting and audio, and build your questions from people’s answers.

I guess after three interviews, this has been learnt and gathered. Our documentary would definitely involve a sequence where we have a start middle and end that has to have a definite flow and continuity of people’s stories alongside with the right emotions and the challenge is creating the right setting even when we’ve only met our interviewees for the first time. And we didn’t have much time to build rapport and stuffs like these. But nonetheless I believe that with the right questions and phrasing, and with GOOD PLANNING AND STRUCTURING. The interview should be able to flow as a story itself. So here are some tips I’ve researched on when conducting an interview.

1. Pick the Right People to Talk To

The first step in conducting a great documentary interview is to find the right people to talk to. This requires a lot of preparation on the film maker’s part. Because each project is different, the amount of work that goes into hunting down your subjects varies.

If you’re looking for experts on a little known event that happened 200 years ago, then you’re going to have to do a lot of research to find experts, and when you do find them, they’re probably so rare that you need to interview whoever you could get. But, if you’re doing a documentary on a subject like heart attack survivors, then there are going to be a lot of people to choose from. Or, if your interview requires you to do man on the street style interviews, then you’ll find the subjects the day of the shoot.

The key is to find someone who is knowledgeable with a great on-camera personality.

2. Edit Your Voice Out

You want the interview to come off as natural when you edit it, and that requires you to cut your voice out. Because of this, it’s important to have your subject respond to your questions by first restating them. You need to stay on top of this throughout the interview so when you go to edit it, everything will make sense.

3. Let Your Subject Speak

Remember that your subject is the expert on the topic and not you. Ask thoughtful and insightful questions, but don’t try to make your subject feel like you know more than they do. Be quiet and let them speak.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask Them to Restate Something

As the director, you need to be very attentive as to what exactly the subject is saying. If they go off on a tangent, don’t be afraid to ask them to rephrase what they said. Make them feel comfortable by letting them know that the reason is you and not them. Also, if a person says ‘um’ a lot, try to get them to say the sentence over again.

5. Always Keep the Edit in Mind

You’re going to find that your subjects have a lot of great and interesting things to say. It’s fine to listen to them, but try to keep your final edit in mind at all times. After all, you’re the director, so direct the interview.

6. Choosing the Right Background and Location

If you’re talent is a child, pick a location which would create relevance and impact. For instance, a playground. You wouldnt put a kid behind a formal desk in an office (unless really needed to). Picking the right location and background can completely change the mood and setting, as well as technical aspects like sound and lighting.

7. Begin all interviews by having subjects introduce themselves on camera

Get their full names, age, titles and other relevant details so that during editing, pronouncements, SUPERS and legal releases will be easier.

8. Plan a shot list

Planning a shot list would definitely make the interview more effortless in aspects of time especially, when your interviewees are in a rush for time. I think for our documentary, this was particularly hard due to space constraints and there were little camera placement locations. But that’s no excuse as you can always do a handheld for additional cutaway facial captures or facial movements. It’s up to you but just plan well:)

Lastly:

Personally, I recommend a wide shot during shots were you’ll have to follow a subject around with a handheld camera, with practice you will be more smooth and avoid all crash ins, zooms and jerks as editing will be one huge JERK indeed.

Observational vs Fiction

I was reading up about observational documentaries and I came across this piece from Google. Since my film is most probably going to be an observational documentary, i thought why not do some research on it and learn more because honestly I still have my doubts about observational films. Isn’t it hard to capture real-time moments? Those emotions, those truths, those actualities. When i watch discovery channel documentaries, or even live broadcasts of Master Chef or some reality blond program like Jersey Shore. SERIOUSLY, how do they do it? I tried carrying the camera 24/7 and keeping it switched on at all times. Capturing the right shots still ain’t as simple as it seems.

 

Michael Brault said “I don’t know what truth is. Truth is something unattainable. We can’t think we’re creating truth with a camera. But what we can do, is reveal something to viewers that allows them to discover their own truth.” I guess the truth is always perceived differently in an audience’s eyes as well. For our documentary, we’re targeting towards something real and emotional. We want some slander against the government, we wanted fears and tears to bring out the spotlight of public housing. We want true stories that could evoke the strongest emotions.

However, the only difference between documentary and fiction film is the integrity of the film as being linked to our understanding of reality. Like what Robin has been teaching us all along, you learn throughout the process, and there’s never a perfect capture, due to flaws and resources like  lighting, time, camera management, weather, luck, etc and the whole shazam. It’s all about growing up with the developing and shooting process.

Vaughan refers to the term ‘actuality’ to describe our belief in the reality of the film, stating that “this actuality…is the subjective conviction on the part of the viewer of that prior and independent existence of the represented world which is specific to the photograph” I always imagined loads of cameras being there on tripods, just rolling on to capture the moment. Well of course i’m sure there are some shows that are scripted but I mean, wow.. It’s tough being ‘IN THE MOMENT’. I’m gonna be the stills photographer in our documentary as well so It’ll be interesting to compare the stills and film.

Bill Nichols suggests that in documentary footage “some quality of the moment persists outside the grip of textual organization”. Therefore the understanding we have of documentary has in some way depended on the ability of the photographic image to impart to us a belief in the existence of the represented beyond its filmic representation. 

Let’s hope we can find our talent asap and construct an actuality that would perhaps impart the ideal belief of public housing and its realities:)

 

 

 

Lighting

An educational video on lighting and its basics for film and documentary!

If you’re shooting an interview for your documentary you will be using either natural light sources or studio lighting. But as what Robin said in tutorials, everyone should making choices in the environment you’re going into accordingly and not be bounded by location of light. Rather, be free and experiment but ensure the ideal visual setting.

If you’re shooting indoors or in a studio, the basic 3 point lighting technique is a favorite and also the most ideal. It fully exposes the facial expression and emotions of your subject as well as isolates them from the background and hides unwanted shadows.

Refresher: The back light creates a nice highlight around your interviewee’s hair, shoulders and face, and it gives them depth that help separate them from the background.

The key light is the main lighting source that casts directional lighting and shadows on the interviewee’s face and body. On the other hand, the fill light is a softer light that helps fill unsightly shadows created by the key light.

Decorate and deign the background by using different colors, cookies to add texture or coloured lights to colour up and add details to your your shot and location composition.

**You should light your interviewee from upstage rather than downstage. The lighting that falls your interviewee’s face and body will be much more desirable. To light your interviewee from upstage simply ensure that the key light is positioned on the other side of your subject to where the camera is positioned. For example if the camera is on the right side of the subject than the light should be coming from the left.

xoxo.