Interviews

 

Interviews

Interviews will play a big part in my documentary as this is the most effective way to get different peoples opinions on things. To keep my documentary interesting I have planned to try and get an interview with a broad range of people, including new fans, older fans and hopefully players or people directly involved with the club itself.  This will therefore hopefully give different perspectives on things so we can see how different people think differently or similarly. 

Questions 

 There are a lot of questions that I could ask in these interviews. However, to keep things short I will limit myself to only key questions in order to keep the audience interested in what they are being asked.

Question Rules

.The first rule of documentary filmmaking questions is to avoid yes or no answers. Just as the rules of good conversation, asking yes or no answers provides no insights. And it can also quickly work you into a corner.

. What do you think of when you think of Sunderland?

. What comes to mind when you think of Sunderland AFC?

.What do you like about Sunderland?

.What is your best memory of Sunderland AFC?

How would you describe the atmosphere at the SOL to a person whos never been? 

Specific Questions

 . What was your opinion on Lee Johnson?

. Do you think his sacking was fair?

. What is your opinion on Alex Neil? 

. What was your opinion on the January transfer window? 

Can Sunderland still get promoted? 

.Don’t interrupt. If someone seems to be getting off track in their storytelling, try not to interrupt them mid-sentence. Instead, use your body language to actively listen, and subtly steer the conversation. For instance, you can nod when you want someone to continue with their train of thought, or you can break eye contact and look down if you want someone to wrap up their story.

.Take breaks. Interviews can be exhausting not only for the subject, but for the interviewer, the crew, and the video producers. Make sure you budget enough time to take breaks when necessary.

Test interviews

I conducted a test interview to see how my questions flow in an interview scenario. 

Gathering verbal feedback on these questions I decided to change them. The reason behind this was that people thought the opening questions are too open and could be saw as being very vague, therefore changing them to shorter more specific questions would benefit the documentary. 

Listening to the verbal feedback I received I have decided to do some further research into interviews and what makes them effective. I found out using the rule of three makes interviews rather effective with the person in frame talking into the empty space on one side of the frame. This gives a more natural look to the scene and helps to connect the viewer to the person in frame.

This is another test interview I conducted to improve my knowledge of interviews. Implementing the rule of thirds technique helped to develop framing knowledge and allowed me to play about with the screen space by adding graphics that don't interfere with the subject on the screen. 

This is the permission form from the person I planned to interview in my documentary. This helps with any legal action this person might take if they are used in the film without their permission. 

Recording Style

As you can see in documentaries there is a go-to camera angle when recording an interview. The use of the "rule of thirds" is very popular
when recording interviews, this is because they are usually paired with a mid-shot or close up shot which helps the viewer connect better with the person in frame and make the scene look more professional. When used in conjunction with a fast lens make for a really nice composition with the background blurred out but the character nicely in focus.

This shows us how we could frame the shot to be very effective in the documentary, this shows us the best way to compose our shot to be as effective as it can be.