There are five important points to be considered when talking about interviewing in documentary making process. There are: the preparation and understanding of situations, questioning strategy, the controller, the camera placement, and the ethic issue. This journal will describe these important points.First of all, the preparation and the understanding of the situations is the important thing. The interviewer needs a basic skill of interviewing for documentary film. The preparation of everything is important, but it must not eliminate the spontaneous factor. The preparation means that the interviewer should have some expectation of what each subject participants will contribute. Another thing is during interview process the interviewer must know when s/he has to talk and when s/he should be quiet. The interviewer cannot talk when the subject is talking, because this situation will make the editing process more difficult. In order to give some response, the interviewer only can give some visual feedback such as nodding or smiling.
The second important factor is the questioning strategy. The interviewer has to arrange the clear and understandable question. It will help the subject answering the question easily. The interviewer also has to guide the subject to answer each questions in complete sentence instead of answering shortly such as ‘yes’ or ‘no’. To gain the depth information, the interviewer has to build the intimate situation with the subject gradually and try to make the subject comfortable with the interviewer.
Third, the controller in interviewing process should be the director, but in some situation the director can use other people such as the researcher or the other crews to make the subject more comfortable during the filming process. Using the researcher as the interviewer can be good way to continue the relationship with the subject because the researcher usually knows the subject before the director. So using the researcher as the interviewer will make the subject more relax and easy to talk about something deeply. On the other hand, using new person (the director) as the interviewer also has some advantages. One of the advantages is the arrival of a new person will build more spontaneous situation between the interviewer and the subject.
Fourth, the camera placement will also have some significant effects, especially between the audiences and the subject. If the camera is placed in front of the subject and make the subject looks talk to the audiences directly, it will give a face-to-face impression between the subject and the audiences. The audiences will feel be involved in the interview and the interview acts on the behalf of the audience.
Finally the last important point is the ethic issue. This is a big issue for the documentary makers. The need to tell the truth is bordered with the interest to keep the privacy of the subject participants. That’s why some documentary films make some controversy in the society after being released because the public cannot accept the documentary that perhaps has disturbed the norms or values applied in the society. Cunnamulla and The Crumb are some of those controversial documentaries.
In conclusion, the five important points should be considered in interviewing especially in documentary making process.
