Wealth Inequality Interviews.
Tasked with carrying out interviews on different subjects, I opted to conduct a small census on a small group of young adults from a range of backgrounds on the topic of wealth inequality. As I felt that although it was different from the subject of my documentary, it was similar enough to be relevant to a majority of my research, and would serve as a good opener for the documentary subject of homelessness as it provided an opportunity to showcase a range of views on homelessness held by various members of the public. So although it was for a different body of work, I was able to link it back in with my documentary as they were both about inequality in society and trying to encourage the audience to think further on their own beliefs.
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As these interviews were to be conducted with young adults, I felt that setting my interviews at a college further added to the feel that my audience/interviewees were young people and made it feel more genuine. My interview style was informal, inviting willing participants to be interviewed on a sofa in a spare room. I had basic questions in mind for how I would open and close each interview, but primarily based the questions off what each of the interviewees said, as I believed this would yield more genuine, interesting results. I had also positioned the camera a ways away from the interviewees so that they would feel less put upon, and more at ease, which I believed would assist in getting them to open up on their beliefs, as I have observed with many other documentaries. The key to a good interview is ensuring that the interviewee feels comfortable, and not as though they are on the spot to be judged, watching a clip from any of Louis Theroux's documentaries would be a prime example of this, regardless of the subject matter, Louis always acts friendly and as thought they are in control of the interviews as this gets more information out of a subject in the long run.
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Due to being able to have my interviewees open up on camera due to my relaxed, friendly and informal interviewing style, I was able to get a lot of information from a small focus group, which each offered up differing opinions. Had I not arranged my interviews to be informal or made the interviewees comfortable, then I do not believe that those harbouring more alternative views would have spoken about their beliefs, further adding merit to the importance of planning of questions, and of the set where an interview will take place and placement of interviewer and camera and its impact on the interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSDQaF2gqec
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When planning for my documentary I watched a lot of documentaries to develop my interview techniques, in doing so I noticed that interviewers would often have met their subjects and got to know them a little as it helped to create a better understanding of the subject they were conducting interviews on and formulate better questions, which would improve the quality of the interview.
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Observing this, I arranged to meet those that I had planned to interview for my documentary a few weeks before I was scheduled to start filming, as it would give them the opportunity to know a bit more about why I was wanting to produce a documentary based around local charities impact on the local homeless community, and it would allow me to get to know a bit more about their operation and those that run the charities, as well as some of the attendees. As this was not yet for the purpose of my documentary, the interviewing style was very chatty but always professional, I was hoping to make a good first impression with the owners of the charities. I feel that I accomplished this as the owners all opened up and told me about some rather internal information about their charities, such as their funding and the struggles of keeping on staff when faced with being registered/unregistered as a charity with the local government and how that imposed certain rules upon how they could operate.
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As I was using these pre interviews to aid with the production of my final documentary, it was important that I make a good impression on those I was hoping to interview, and that they would on me, as if they were unwilling to go into details on their operation or were not a good fit for my documentary, I would avoid doing later formal interviews with them for my documentary. Because of this, whilst performing these pre interviews, it was not only important to carry out interviews at their place of operation to help them feel comfortable when talking to me, but also to get a first hand impression of their operation and their facilities. These pre interviews proved to be invaluable as they later formed to be the basis of my entire documentary, with the information these pre interviews yielded, I was able to formulate questions that would reveal to my audience in depth details of each charity the requirements of each charity and what it takes to provide free care to those in need. In finding out that there were many regulations in place, making it problematic for charities to provide care to those in need, that I felt many people were not aware of, and also hearing a number of people say that there was enough care available to people for homelessness to not be worth paying attention to, I felt as though it would make a far more interesting documentary than one on the causes of homelessness and the care provided for them.
-
Without my pre interviews, I would not have been aware of the behind the scenes problems charities face, I would not have known what to prepare for in terms of filming on location, in some cases I would not have known who to speak to for the best information/to speak to at all for my documentary, my questions would have been entry level, which would have left my documentary lacking in terms of being educational to a viewing audience, and my documentary would have been based on something entirely different, which there are many documentaries about, and made by far more informed people than myself. Because of this, I feel that a pre interview is vital to conducting good interviews, and have learnt that in the future I should always try to conduct a pre interview as well as carrying out as much research on a subject/person as possible before attempting to create a documentary.
-
As these interviews were to be conducted with young adults, I felt that setting my interviews at a college further added to the feel that my audience/interviewees were young people and made it feel more genuine. My interview style was informal, inviting willing participants to be interviewed on a sofa in a spare room. I had basic questions in mind for how I would open and close each interview, but primarily based the questions off what each of the interviewees said, as I believed this would yield more genuine, interesting results. I had also positioned the camera a ways away from the interviewees so that they would feel less put upon, and more at ease, which I believed would assist in getting them to open up on their beliefs, as I have observed with many other documentaries. The key to a good interview is ensuring that the interviewee feels comfortable, and not as though they are on the spot to be judged, watching a clip from any of Louis Theroux's documentaries would be a prime example of this, regardless of the subject matter, Louis always acts friendly and as thought they are in control of the interviews as this gets more information out of a subject in the long run.
-
Due to being able to have my interviewees open up on camera due to my relaxed, friendly and informal interviewing style, I was able to get a lot of information from a small focus group, which each offered up differing opinions. Had I not arranged my interviews to be informal or made the interviewees comfortable, then I do not believe that those harbouring more alternative views would have spoken about their beliefs, further adding merit to the importance of planning of questions, and of the set where an interview will take place and placement of interviewer and camera and its impact on the interview.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSDQaF2gqec
-
When planning for my documentary I watched a lot of documentaries to develop my interview techniques, in doing so I noticed that interviewers would often have met their subjects and got to know them a little as it helped to create a better understanding of the subject they were conducting interviews on and formulate better questions, which would improve the quality of the interview.
-
Observing this, I arranged to meet those that I had planned to interview for my documentary a few weeks before I was scheduled to start filming, as it would give them the opportunity to know a bit more about why I was wanting to produce a documentary based around local charities impact on the local homeless community, and it would allow me to get to know a bit more about their operation and those that run the charities, as well as some of the attendees. As this was not yet for the purpose of my documentary, the interviewing style was very chatty but always professional, I was hoping to make a good first impression with the owners of the charities. I feel that I accomplished this as the owners all opened up and told me about some rather internal information about their charities, such as their funding and the struggles of keeping on staff when faced with being registered/unregistered as a charity with the local government and how that imposed certain rules upon how they could operate.
-
As I was using these pre interviews to aid with the production of my final documentary, it was important that I make a good impression on those I was hoping to interview, and that they would on me, as if they were unwilling to go into details on their operation or were not a good fit for my documentary, I would avoid doing later formal interviews with them for my documentary. Because of this, whilst performing these pre interviews, it was not only important to carry out interviews at their place of operation to help them feel comfortable when talking to me, but also to get a first hand impression of their operation and their facilities. These pre interviews proved to be invaluable as they later formed to be the basis of my entire documentary, with the information these pre interviews yielded, I was able to formulate questions that would reveal to my audience in depth details of each charity the requirements of each charity and what it takes to provide free care to those in need. In finding out that there were many regulations in place, making it problematic for charities to provide care to those in need, that I felt many people were not aware of, and also hearing a number of people say that there was enough care available to people for homelessness to not be worth paying attention to, I felt as though it would make a far more interesting documentary than one on the causes of homelessness and the care provided for them.
-
Without my pre interviews, I would not have been aware of the behind the scenes problems charities face, I would not have known what to prepare for in terms of filming on location, in some cases I would not have known who to speak to for the best information/to speak to at all for my documentary, my questions would have been entry level, which would have left my documentary lacking in terms of being educational to a viewing audience, and my documentary would have been based on something entirely different, which there are many documentaries about, and made by far more informed people than myself. Because of this, I feel that a pre interview is vital to conducting good interviews, and have learnt that in the future I should always try to conduct a pre interview as well as carrying out as much research on a subject/person as possible before attempting to create a documentary.
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