Listen To The City Breathe: 10. Shooting Primary Footage

I am not an interviewer. I didn't know the first thing that I should do in order to get decent documentary content. But I do read a lot. A friend got me a book where the author interviews various foreign subjects who are living in Japan. After reading a few of these interviews, it was clear that he had a very specific script to stick to, in order to get all of his main concerns across. Of course, he would also have the flexibility to move a bit deeper in some ideas when he chose to. I just decided to steal all of those questions. While they were all geared towards foreigners in Japan, I thought they were just as applicable to foreigners in America.

Before the shoot, I emailed all the questions to Ramon, in hope that he wouldn't be too startled by the questions. I didn't know how I wanted the final film to look. But after the first interview, I realized that I wanted to be sure to edit out any of my own speaking. That means that I should have told him to repeat the question, or make the question clear, when he answered. I didn't do that the first time, but I did tell him for the second interview shoot.

I wanted to conduct the same exact interview in different places. I thought that this would allow for more variety in choosing what the final film would look like. But it also allowed for a bit of variety in other ways, too. The interview subject was able to rethink some of his previous answers. Perhaps he would change some answers, or he would elaborate on some questions a bit more later.

Another advantage of interviewing multiple times was that I also had the chance to think about some issues in greater detail in between interviews, and therefore I could ask other questions that I might have forgotten about during a previous interview.

To be sure, I have realized that in the future, I might have to alter this method; after all, who wants to be interviewed several times? In fact, Ramon is actually my second interview subject. The first subject sat for one interview, but I didn't have the chance to get additional footage or interviews of her; our schedules never matched up. So as I develop this documentary and interview skill set, I am going to have to better adapt to situations like that, when the interview subject isn't as open to meeting so much.

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