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Directing: Documentary Interview Tips

Interviews are the backbone of most non-fiction video presentations. Interviews are powerful message carriers that you can easily intercut with other production elements in a documentary, such as actuality sequences, re-enactments, graphics, animation and scripted narration.

Typically interviews use talking heads (to camera) and voiceovers (to pictures). Don't confuse voiceovers with narration. A v/o is the audio portion of an interview clip laid over supporting visuals in editing. Narration is scripted information sometimes voiced in the field to camera (stand-up), but it is usually recorded in the studio by a narrator or a participant reading from a narration script to the edited documentary.

Talking heads are interviews with main and secondary characters in a fact-based story. Main characters are participants whose story you are telling and through whose eyes the audience experiences the world of the documentary.

Secondary characters represent the supporting cast. These participants provide additional information the audience needs to understand the story, such as background and historical information. You also interview secondary characters to support and sometimes challenge the themes and points of view presented in a documentary. Secondary characters can be subject matter experts, eye witnesses, official (government/institutional) spokespeople, vox populi (persons in the street) or associates and relatives of the main character.

Before you shoot an interview, consider the following:

• What will each interview contribute to the information flow of the story?
• Will you conduct a factual or a personal interview?
• How will you shoot the interview?

So, where do you start?

When you're making a documentary or any fact-based video, you should be heavily researched and know the informational role you want each of your interview subjects to play. In other words, know what you want each of your participants to talk about before you sit them down in front of the camera. This means you really have to know what your documentary is about.

Research is collecting information about the topic of your doc and about people who might end up in it as participants. Once you've mined internet and print sources and you've pre-interviewed people, you will have a better understanding of how to shape and focus your initial idea for the documentary - what to include and what to leave out. Focusing the documentary (what's the story?) will inform your strategy for each interview and its purpose in your doc. Research gives you more than facts and background information. Research will identify the two most important things a documentary needs: characters to populate it and actual situations they will allow you to film.

Research is also about knowing your participants. Pre-interviews are critical. Visit your main characters without a camera and get to know them - what they do and how they live. With secondary characters, such as subject matter experts, a phone or e-mail pre-interview will usually suffice.

Pre-interviews are not rehearsals for the real thing. In pre-interviews, you explain to potential participants what topic your documentary aims to explore. Ask subjects what knowledge and involvement they have with the topic. If you decide an interviewee would make an interesting character in your doc, schedule an on-camera interview. Don't feed subjects the questions ahead of time, but do tell them what you would like to talk to them about in front of the camera. This should make for a spontaneous and unrehearsed interview session.