Shooting interviews

What follows is a very simple version of an outline for a straightforward documentary, entirely invented for the purpose of illustration. The film is called Zach Gets a Baby Sister. The outline presumes that because this event was very contained, shooting was under way (the verite scenes were filmed, but not many of the interviews) before the outline was written. 

Before shooting, look at films that contain interviews and decide what you like or don t like about an approach and what you want to do in your own film. Do you plan to appear on camera along with your interviewees, as Judith Helfand did in Blue Vinyll Do you want your interviewees to appear to be addressing the audience directly Do you want to take a less formal approach to interviewing, asking your subjects questions as they go about their lives or filming them as they discuss specific subjects with each other ... 

STEVE When filming the men, it worked out better if it was just me alone. If we were both there, Stephen [He)wood] s focus would get split, and it just wasn t working. So I would shoot them and have these conversations—much more conversations than interviews. Initially 1 didn t even mic myself, but Jeannie encouraged me to do it. And then, because the conversations took on the importance that they did, she felt strongly that I should be the narrator, to continue that voice and be the audience s access to the story. 

Armed with that, you can do interviews you know how to craft questions. And you can always go out and shoot live cinematography, whether it s cinema verite shooting or live shooting of landscapes. The ideal thing is to do at least some of the production, in addition to interviews, while you re doing the script, because you re going to find that there s material you didn t expect. 

Six months ago, if someone had said, "Will you interview Philippe Petit " I would have said, "Probably." But luck is a residue of design. The design comes from that intuitive conviction that the story is powerful, and from the themes that you articulate on the basis of that conviction. That design then allows you to go out in the world and chance, so to speak, upon all sorts of elements interviewees, places that you might shoot, quotes from a book, episodes of the history that you knew nothing about. And that s why that interplay between obsessiveness and decisiveness is so crucial. 

Signs of abuse I once had a driver come in for an interview looking pretty rough. He had two black eyes, a cut lip, the works. When I asked what happened, he said he was shooting pool at the local tavern when another individual tried to take his turn. 

In the following interview segment we find evidence that several of Latane and Darley s psychological processes may have been at work. Sam Donaldson wanted to know why, after the fighter pilots had radioed the AWACS informing them that they were about to shoot down two helicopters, no one on board the AWACS did anything to stop them. 

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