Interviewing Techniques in Documentary Production

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.

Never Been Kissed

Picture is taken from http://www.gloucestershire.police.uk/kids_aware/5b.html

Mengutip judul film Drew Barrymore tahun 1999 yang mengisahkan perjuangan dia sebagai jurnalis (Josie Geller) yang ditugasi kembali ke bangku SMA untuk mengetahui gaya pergaulan siswa paling mutakhir. Dia harus menyamar menjadi salah satu siswa dan berusaha bergabung dengan grup siswa populer. Masalahnya waktu jaman SMA pun dia bukan termasuk siswa populer bahkan termasuk siswa yang sering dikerjain oleh siswa lain. Kisah selanjutnya ya seperti Hollywood teen movies lain. Kisah percintaan, kekecewaan, balas dendam, menangnya kebaikan lawan kejahatan. Tapi ada yang menarik dalam dialog Drew di salah satu bagian film itu. Dia mengatakan bahwa hidup itu tidak berakhir di SMA saja. Apa yang dicapai di SMA itu bukan apa-apa dibandingkan tantangan yang harus dihadapi di dunia luar selepas sekolah. Murid paling popular, senior paling galak, jagoan paling gaul yang suka ngerjain atau malakin (bullying) adik kelas, belum tentu survive di dunia luas. Banyak kisah nyata yang menunjukkan bahwa mungkin saja adik kelas yang sering dikerjain itu suatu saat nantinya menjadi satu-satunya orang yang bisa menolong senior galak (yang suka ngerjain waktu sekolah) yang dalam kesulitan. Atau adik kelasnya malah menjadi bossnya di dunia kerja. Semuanya mungkin terjadi. Kalau sudah begitu siapa yang tertawa paling terakhir?

MAPRAS, MAPRAM, PLONCO, OSPEK, ORIENTASI
Senior dan yunior seperti dua kutub yang tidak mungkin disatukan. Dengan alasan tradisi, senior bisa memalak, memaki, bahkan memukul yuniornya. Di lingkungan militer dan yang sok militer istilahnya pembinaan. Yunior didoktrin bahwa kekerasan yang dilakukan ‘turun-temurun’ itu ditujukan untuk meningkatkan disiplin dan kekompakan mereka. Atas nama korps/persaudaraan/geng segala kekerasan hanya menjadi rahasia yang sebenarnya sudah diketahui umum.

Tambahkan ke daftar ini bila kurang…
Kejadian Universitas Nurtanio, STPDN, Sekolah Pelayaran, Oknum Polisi, Oknum Militer, OSPEK SMA/SMP…Sampai ada yang mati. Eh ada juga sekolah pencetak seniman yang punya reputasi OSPEKnya paling galak dan sadis plus jorok…Seniman kok militeristik…

Pemukulan, tendangan dan kekerasan lainnya yang tertangkap kamera (thanks to technology) hanyalah puncak gunung es saja. Kekerasan di lembaga pendidikan atas nama tradisi sudah berlangsung sekian lama dan sedikit yang berusaha menghentikan. Masih sering terdengar di antara teman-teman kita yang dengan bangganya menceritakan ‘kekejaman’ mereka ketika meng-OSPEK adik kelasnya di bangku sekolah atau kuliah. LUCU katanya…
Lihat aja apakah tetap LUCU bila suatu saat nanti orang yang dikerjain habis-habisan itu menjadi atasannya di tempat kerja.

STOP BULLYING!!!

Kata Mbah-Mbah dulu…Jangan sombong…Gusti mBoten Sare/Tuhan Tidak Tidur…

Kinetics and Sound

The importance of “kinetics” for a director
In directing a film, a director needs to know about kinetics, because the kinetics or the movement of the actor in the screen can be a good medium of communication to reinforce the meaning of the action. In realism film genre, the movement of the actors should be as realistic as the movement in real life. In another genre such as musical genre, the movement can be more melodramatic, bombastic and hyperbolic.

Giannetti (1996, 92) discusses that the frame in film can define the movement and also can create a three dimensional effect that is important to illustrate the situation or emotion in the film. Using some particular movement can bring the emotion of the audiences. For example: the movement toward the camera of a protagonist can make the audience feel close relation with the protagonist and vice versa. The other movements to create the mood of the film are upward and downward movements, right to left and left to right movement. The movement can be supported by the choosing of camera distance and angle. For example, a high and wide angle can create the loneliness effect to the action more than using an eye level and wide angle.

Sound
According to Mollison (1997, 338), equalisation the process of affecting the quality of sound coming through the mixer by selectively emphasising or diminishing the relative strength of difference parts of sound. The equalisation process uses the control of treble-affecting the high frequencies in the sound-, the mid-range –adjusting the mid frequencies of the sound- and the bass – arranging the low frequencies of the sound. For example, to keep the consistent quality of the sound in filming one person in different shots, the audio recordist needs to arrange the position of the treble, mid and bass knobs to the same position in every take.

Normalising the sound mixer means to put all of the input knob into zero positions, especially when the mixer had used by different person before. The reason of doing normalising is to hear the real sound produced in the filming without any influence from the electronic circuitry. Then from this step, the sound engineer can adjust the sound according the necessity.

Discussing about mic level and line level, Mollison (1997, 337) states that a mic level signal is the audio signal level which is available from many microphones. It is a low-level voltage signal (usually from 2-5 millivolts). A line level signal is a higher voltage signal (up near one volt or higher) sent from another piece of equipment such as a VCR, a tape recorder or a CD player. An error of positioning the mic/line selector can cause a distort sound. For instance, if the mic level signal is assigned as a line level source, the volume will be very low and vice versa.