New to documentary interviewing and have important AIDS relief assignment

[Treen Media]

 

Can anyone recommend any references or resources for editing a documentary?

 

I have the main subject staying at my house for two days to shoot the interviews.  He just got back from Africa.

I'm watching the Lynda.com Premiere Pro CS6 for Documentary series. It's about 4 hours but mostly deals with how to use PR, which I already know fairly well.

 

Here's the story; I have someone staying with me for a couple of days on Wednesday who just got back from Africa helping with an AIDS project. I told him I'd make a documentary to explain what he'd be doing the last few years. He's bring stills and videos that haven't been sorted yet. In other words I have no access to shoot more on location.

My software is all of CS6. I know enough about Premiere Pro but not enough about editing documentaries and about nothing about shooting interviews. To this point I've mainly made tutorials of myself. Here's my latest, http://youtu.be/lPRgdNvIIPE to get a glimpse of my skills level.

I'm not too worried about the hard stuff, lighting, sound, video capture, how my software works to do video editing. What I am worried about is what questions to ask, what to video edit etc… Basically how do you make a documentary. I'm all self taught so I'd love to help links to good resources.

 

Thanks ahead of time!

[Charles]

Work out your list of priority questions, discuss them with your interviewee. Have an idea where you want to go with the answers. Don't put the interviewee in centre screen but to the left or right of screen (rule of thirds). Edit the questions first until you are happy with the flow then insert cutaway footage. It's a lot a trial and error.

[Treen Media]

Very much appreciate the advice!

[Author]

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