Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi, My name is Joey Doubt, and I am a documentary filmmaker. And this course I'm gonna walk you through all the steps to prepare, shoot and edit a video interview or more like a mini documentary. You don't have to be an aspiring documentarian to gain some useful insight from this course . There's lots of useful information if you want to do a podcast. If you want to create a short video for your blawg, if you want to do something for print, there a lot of useful tips here that I want to share with you. I've done work for a lot of media outlets, including The New York Times, Time magazine, The Economist. I've also done independent projects, both feature and short films, some of them that played at Sundance Toronto Film Festival Slamdance. I've interviewed dozens of people and gained a lot of insight from that, and through this course, I'm gonna share a lot of the tips and knowledge that I picked up with you
2. Project: Create a Short Video: you're signing for this class is gonna be the plan. Shoot and edit a 3 to 5 minute interview with the subject of your choice on a personal story of There's Now. This could be on expert in your field that has an interesting story to tell. This could be if your business under this could be a case study. You like a user experience story or this could even be a family member. You know, some family history going to research the story you're gonna plan to shoot, you're gonna interview them. You're gonna edit the film into a Polish video your project and include as many interviews as you want. But obviously, you have to have at least one interview along the way. You're going to do some research and pick up archival material. B roll. Find what's out there that helps illustrate your story that you're going to incorporate in the edit. So when you're done, you're going to create a nice, polished mini documentary
3. Strike Case Study: So throughout this project, I'm going to refer to a short documentary that I directed called Strike. The Greatest Bowling Story Ever told It was a Kickstarter project and I was fortunate enough. Been honored enough. Teoh Be selected to premiere on The New York Times is new documentary series called Made With Kickstarter so you can watch it for free on YouTube. There's a link in the resource is Paige, and it's about 12 minutes, and I'm gonna use that Azan example that are referred to a lot sort of as a case study throughout the process of the different stages and editing, and I'll be trying some clips from it. So if you want to watch it, just kind of know what I'm talking about. When I refer to it, feel free to watch it. It's free. It's on YouTube
4. Planning Your Video: So let's talk about planning Your video planning is very important. The better you plan, the better things are gonna turn out later. You have a smooth production, smoother editing process, and you have a better finished product. Why would you want interview someone? Most likely it's because you have a story you want to tell where you want them to tell their story, or there's some insight you want to share. So as part of the planning process, you got to figure out what you want. Your film accomplish what story you want to tell him what you want to achieve in planning a documentary. You're planning an interview. A lot of it is figuring out what you want to achieve and then working backwards. But even if you're not doing a documentary and you're just one interview someone for your blogger website podcast, you won't have a general idea of where you want that interview to go to work. From there, of course, you have great surprises. It'll go a ways you didn't anticipate, which is great, but you won't have a general idea of where you hope it'll go toe work from there and then be open to the surprises in the different roads that will lead you down. So you want to outline what you want your short video to be. It could be a couple sentences, or it could be a very long treatment for, like, a feature documentary. But for this case for probably gonna be doing very short film. So also, while planning your video, you want to figure out narratively how you're going to incorporate the interviews and convey information to the audience. So lots of times with documentaries is a lot of different ways to get the information across to the viewer. So sometimes you have a narrator. Sometimes you have title cards explaining, you know, short little snippets of text to sort of give you the some back story or just like enough information, understand what's happening. Sometimes there was an on air correspondent, and so their character. I mean, you also see this, like with Michael Moore's stuff or super size Me Documentarian is a character in the film. The documentarian or the reporter is going through the story as a character and is talking to people. So the so those interviews, most of them, they're part of the interviews as more of a conversation and they're on camera. That's a very specific style on. Then you have other, another style where the narrative information of the film is built solely on interviews, maybe some title cards incorporated in there. But there's no narrator, just all the interviews or get conveying the information. So if you're so, I I personally like to do films in that style, Um, and so it's a little trickier because you have to make sure that you get all of your basic information down, because when you have a narrator, it's very easy. Teoh, in editing be like, Oh, we have these gaps here. We'll just write out some narration and the narrator fill it in.
5. Research: So once of your outline and the general idea of the story, you want to tell her what you want Achieve with your video, you're gonna want to do some research. And research is a great way to generate the questions that you're gonna wanna ask and also to familiarize yourself with the subject matter, especially if it's subject matter that you're not familiar with. So something I like to dio before I start on the research process is think of all the questions that I have. Now, before I begin researching, you need to be careful that you become too much of an expert and that you assume people would know information that you didn't know previously, but, you know, because he researched it. So you want to make sure you have a nice balance later on. So at this point, you may have a general idea of who you want interview. You may have started this whole course knowing there's someone that you want interview an expert in your field or someone with a story family member. Maybe you don't know who you want interview. Maybe you kind of know you won't tell story or you want to talk about a subject matter, cover a subject matter, and you don't exactly know who you would want to talk. Teoh Research is a great way to find potential interview subjects for your film. Once you come up with all the questions that you want answered and that you didn't know before he started this process, you want to sort of just jump in and find anything and everything about the subject matter or the person that you would want to talk to you so that could be researching articles that could be reading books. If it's an author reading their material, that could be going to you tube going to Netflix, just looking at films about the subject you're looking at, looking at interviews, looking at talks about the person you may wanna interview on. And then it's also a good way to find people that you would want interview that you didn't know before. Some of you reading an article and the journalist in the article sites, you know, talk to someone who are interviewed someone and the article, and then you're like, Oh, hey, that might be a good person that I would want to talk to the research is also a great way to start generating question ideas. Eso as you're going through the material, just take notes, things that you find interesting things that you're like. Oh, that's interesting. Talk about things that maybe the person had been interviewed by someone else and you didn't think you're like, Maybe they touched on a subject like That's interesting, but I wish they would have gotten more in depth like I'll ask more questions about that. Also in the research process is a great chance to begin looking for archival material, But this is a good chance to kind of figure out what type of other media is out there. There's films, stills if there's audio recordings, because these will play into your your video. This is will help add context and add, basically, is the stuff you want to edit into your and your and your video. You know, to really take advantage of what the medium video has to offer, you want to see what they're talking about, so you really want to see as much of what's happening as possible. You know, you could even be as basic as just you know you're searching for images online to sort of see what kind of photographs of the subject matter that you're covering or the person or available kind of films. Uh, what kind of you know, if there's audio recordings of anything else as you progress on you start talking to people that you would interview. You would ask them like, Oh, hey, do you have any photographs and videos, anything like that. So researching for archival material is both beneficial because you would need it later on in the editing process. But also, it's a good way Teoh generate questions because if you know what you have beforehand like I know you found this interesting photo. So when you're gonna bring the person, you could be like, OK, tell me about this photograph. Tell me, you know, Tell me a story behind it. Tell me what happened and then you have you know, you have a photograph so you can show the photograph as a person's talking about it. So you know you have a win because you already have the you don't have to go digging for it later. So with research with strike, I talked to Bill. I talked about people beforehand before I even went out there to get a better idea, I talked to the author of the article that I read on, and then I also just read a lot about bowling and general. I watched a lot of YouTube videos about bowling Pro Bowlers, read a lot about bowling, learned a lot of stuff that never made it into the film stuff about oil patterns, stuff about the differences between amateur bowlers and pro bowlers. It helped me that knowledge because even though I didn't specifically explain oil patterns in the film, there was a little bit of a roll of oil in the film had an understanding there. So when he talked about it in the interview, I could ask him to clarify, and I had a basis of knowledge there what he was talking about so that I could further ask him to explain that further and why the 900 achievement is so hard
6. Finding Interview Subjects: Let's talk about finding your interview subject. So obviously, a lot of the steps sort of interweave overlap because you may have already known who you want. Interview in the first place, and then you may have not have had a great idea. You kind of knew you wanted to cover a subject matter topic. They didn't really know who you wanted to talk. Teoh. So there's different types of interview subjects that ad different context. Your story. This will claim. Or if you're doing a longer foreign project, but even doing a short project, you have the time. You can interview multiple people, and it makes your your film more rich, more dynamic, more interesting. So you would have your primary subject. This would be your main, you know, some your main characters, people that were there. If you compare it to Teoh like a courtroom will be your eye with people that were there and saw what happened or were part of the story. Or if you're doing an interview where kind of talking to an expert, someone in your field, this would be your main subject is to be your expert, the person you want, talk to you that the film that your video is about, then you would have people that maybe people that weren't there at your story, but their character witnesses, they add cod They Can you describe your character? They could describe your expert. They sort of ad context to who that person is. These air, these air interviews that people were talking about someone else or you're filming. They had context to the person you're talking to, make your story more vivid. And then you might want to talk to experts. And again, this also depends how expansive in scope your story is, or 50 even if it even works. So in the case of strike, I talked to the guy at the United States Bowling Congress, and the only appears at the beginning of the film. And he's really their toe add context to what bowling a 900 means on the service. Maybe if someone just told you has gobbled a 900 you don't really understand what that means. So the guy So you know, we have an expert come in to be like OK, that's bowling 36 strikes in a row. That's only three perfect games in a row and Aschiana League Night pressures on. You have to have 36 strikes. It has to be perfect. It has to be official asked account, and only 21 people have done this. That's when you would want an expert or someone who may not be directly involved in the story, to come in to sort of set up the stakes, set up the background so that your viewer, your audience member, has a better understanding of the story in front of them. So once you figure out who you want to talk to you, then you need to contact them and ask if I want to be interviewed. You know, it is a family number that's going pretty easy. Uh, if this is someone you know or someone who are you know, the second connections, you know his nose, you could ask for an introduction. Reach out to them with people you don't necessarily know. I found it's usually email Facebook. They usually work pretty well, toe, find people and reach out. You know, send a friendly email I found with people that maybe you know, very busy or made the are somewhat high profile in your field or in general. Usually, if you give yourself enough time and you have a lot of lead time and you reach out, Ah, a lot of people you can you can reach and you can get an interview, especially kind of explain what you're trying to do we're trying to achieve. If it's very short notice, usually you won't get very far. But with enough time, you can usually get land a lot of people and get some good interviews. So, for example, Strike I came across a magazine article about Bill Story and Bowling A 900. And so I knew I wanted to tell that story. And obviously we need to talk to Bill. He would be integral to that on then. As I talked to Bill, he led me to other people that were there that night, or people that know him. And so with Bill, Bill, story happened to him. And then there were other people there that added context to the story, either because they were there or the new bill, and so they could pick a paint, a character picture of bill. So for your first assignment, write up a short summary of what you want your film to achieve and explain who you would interview and a little bit about what you hope for them to share and contribute to your film on. You could interview one person, and you gonna be a couple people, but just at least one person and then also right. What kind of B roll as an archival material or stuff you would film, you hope to incorporate into your finished product, so sure that to the class and if you have any questions, feel free to ask him.
7. Crafting Your Interview Questions: All right. So you've done your research kind of know you want to talk to you. And now let's talk about crafting your interview questions for your interview. If I'm looking for different people to interview for a story, I like to do pre interviews. And so pre interviews for me are both another form of research and in a way, that a little bit of an audition. So, I mean, there's some people where it is really interesting story. I want to tell it like it is their story. You know, I'll interview them like they need to be interviewed no matter what, whether they're good or bad on camera, you know, I'll work with it. You may be looking for an expert. I'm looking for someone to add some context, your store or someone who, if they're interviewed or not, it's not integral to the video. I'll do a pre interview, and I like to do pre interviews, even with people that I know for sure, I'm an interview, so it's sort of you can meet. You could meet a person if you have the time, or just a simple as ah, phone call phone chat or Skype trapped. In a way, you're sort of interviewing them on the phone like a Tell me about the story tell me about this is it's a way for you to chat with them. Andan find out more. So maybe you haven't tell you about this story. But then they mentioned something else that you never came across in your research. And then, you know that like, Oh, hey, that's an interesting That's an interesting tidbit I'd like to touch on that when we do the actual interview. So it's a way to do some more research, kind of get a better picture of what they would say on camera once you actually do the interview. But also it's a way for you to audition them and see how they sound. I mean, so maybe if this is someone were like, Oh, I need an expert. But you have you identified three and then you talk to one, and then there the very classic professor and monotone, Very Dr Voice. And then you're like, OK, well, like I'm already falling asleep on the phone with this person, I'm sure they're an expert on the field, but they probably not gonna be that great on camera that was part of planning. You wanna you wanna cover your bases and make sure both your time and and their time fourth it because you could do an interview. I've done interviews with people and then they didn't have being terrible and there was never used in the film. So now you want to write out your questions. Eyes is a personal choice. I like to sort of write everything down. I like everything written down so that, like in my brain, were like, totally spazz out. I don't have a whole list that I could refer back Teoh and run through that. Some people like Teoh kind of playoff the person's answer and kind of a general idea of where they want to go, but a little more free flowing, which I definitely do. And it's definitely you don't want to stick to the list. And, you know, if they say something interesting, you don't ignore it just because, like, well, no, that doesn't follow my next question. I got to go to my next question so that there's a fine balance that you gained with experience of how you want to do the interview. But so I don't have to write everything out on sometimes a lot of notes Teoh to my question list. I sort of structure it. So it starts with the easier stuff. First. You kind of wanna warm up the person, especially if this is someone who doesn't do a lot of interviews as it doesn't do a lot of media. So you know they're easier questions. Some of your name tell me you're working from a little bit about yourself. It's very basic stuff and then kind of doom or back story questions for general questions with with Drank and Bill. Tell me about bowling. Tell me about playing toe. Tell me about the place you live broader details and then and then gradually from there, move into more personal questions. Harder questions, you know, questions that may, you know. I mean, there could be sensitive questions, and you don't know how they'll react to them. So you kind of want a warm into it. So one structure questions to kind of start easy and then get get more hard whether hard means emotionally hard or just the controversial hard. So while you're writing now, your questions again you want to keep in mind with that list of questions that you had before you started all the research of stuff you know, for the basis of your subject matter, your story. So you want Make sure to corporate that in your questions, um, released have questions that three anticipated answer would be something that covers that detail her answers, that question that you had from the very beginning, when you're formulating your questions in writing down your questions in the way you would ask them, you want to keep the questions open ended. So what that means is you don't want to ask yes or no questions. You don't ask questions like Do you bowl? Yes. You want to ask for over a question like So tell me what you dio knowing that their answer is gonna be about bowling or knowing that, you know, you kind of want to structure your questions with the idea that you ready from your research. You have a general idea of what they're gonna answer or what you want them to say or cover assed faras. Your your story goes, but you want a structure your questions more open ended. Tell me about your childhood. Tell me about how, Tell me about the first strike. You gotta tell me about to tell me how that felt Very open ended questions that elicit a story or a long response. Finally, as you're talking to the person you're gonna interview, sometimes they may ask for if they can get a list of questions beforehand to prep. I'm hesitant to send someone my entire specific questions. She The reason is I don't want to send them the questions ahead of time. And then they study them. And then they come up with their answers. And then they rehearsed their answers. By the time you interview them, they come off is very rehearsed, very stiff, very unnatural. You know, I want there to be. I want them to the natural like as if it's more of a conversation. A ziff, They're talking and they're coming across naturally. That said, there is, you know, depending what kind of interview it is. And you know how far back you have to remember if you're talking to an expert and maybe you want them to cite some statistics that might not be stuff they can remember off the top of their head, and so they would want to come prepared. So I like to cover, you know, if they ask, or even if they don't ask because, you know, I want them to come. If I know there specific things like numbers, I would ask. I would tell them ahead of time, but I'll generally give them subjects and a little broader topics of what we would talk about.
8. Planning the Shoot: Okay, so now you want plan the actual details of the shoot. So first off, you wanna figure out where you're going to do the interview? Eso Usually it'll come down to Do you want to do it in a studio, or do you want to do it on location? So studio meaning and you would rent out a space that's designed for filming? The advantage of a studio is it's a very controlled environment. So you're not gonna really wantedto audio issues because studios most likely soundproof. Also, if you're doing a lot of interviews for this project, maybe you want the background to be consistent. This would be a way Teoh. Keep consistency in the look of all your interviews because you control the light. You control the background, control the sound. Everything is controlled. So you have more control over how the interview looks, and you can keep interviews consistent. If that is a style that you're going for, usually it's something a lot more low key or or just you know you want to mix up the look or you want people in the environment. You're going to do the interview on location and on location could be going to them so at their house or their place of work, but basically just means anywhere. That's not a studio, so things to keep in mind with location is you lack as much control. So if you're their office, their office could be very noisy. Their office could have terrible light. So these two things to keep in mind sound something you always want to keep in mind light. If you have the time, it helps to do a location scout where you would go to the potential location that you would film it ahead of time to check. Sometimes I don't have that luxury, and so you just show up and make the best of it. So things you wanna keep in mind when you're figuring out what kind of look at you want to film that you want to pay attention to sound. So if it's a noisy office environment like how noisy is gonna be, is it gonna interrupt with the audio from the interview with Interview With most important things is the audio. If you have mediocre a visual, people can forgive that terrible audio. In an interview with the most important thing is what the person saying It is really bad and bad audio gets really annoying and turns people off. So you make sure you get nice clean audio. So if you're in an office environment, it could be noisy. Uh, they're if you're in someone's house, they have a window unit, a C. You probably turn the A C off, and it gets hot. A lot of things that cause sound that usually ignore in your day to day life. Once everyone, once you're listening to the interview, they all stick out and they're all like things that start like stabbing your ears and interrupting your your interview. So you want to keep those in mind. That said, if you're in an office environment economist, either Natural environment if the audience member sees just sort of like subconsciously, they see them talking. But then they see that they're in a noisy environment, a little bit of noise and background. They tend to forgive that because it's like OK, you know, like the brain knows, like other an office environment. Offices were noisy. What gets tricky is when you know that's a year and they're there private office. But it's not very soundproof, so you don't see anyone, but the noise is still coming in That would throw an audience off a little bit there. Sort of take him out of the story a little bit because they'd be hearing this background noise there. Get distracting. So these are just things to keep in mind. Ideally, you would want to find somewhere quiet, uh, secluded that you have a little more control over your looking for as much control as possible. So, you know, you would also want to figure out your gear and your crew. I do. One man shoots all the time A lot. You know, it's just how budgets dictate. Sometimes a lot of times I'm showing up, setting up the camera, setting up lights, miking the person during the interview. Uh, it's just me. And so I'm like, you know, talking to the person, and I'm like I in the corner of my eye to make sure the camera still rolling the batteries and die. The card isn't full. You know, I still see the sound bar moving like one headphone on my ear, monitoring the audio, making sure it's not like some interference. And then I'm still, like trying to maintain eye contact, Talk to them, listen to what they're saying. Come up with next question and, you know, figure out, figure out if I need to follow up question and go through my list. Doable. If it's a lot of stuff, it's going through your mind. So them or you can outsource each of those tasks to someone else. So they worry about it. The more you're able to focus on the interview and fully put your attention in it, obviously, you know, if you write a crew, that would be more money. So it really depends on what kind of project you're trying to achieve. If it's like a Web video, you know, you could easily pop a camera on a tripod. Put a mic on him, you know, put some headphones on and you know, just do it yourself. Beyond this. Go for this, but it a very basic level, you know, if you want help, you know, look for a camera person, look for a sound person. Gear rise will talk more in the next lesson about a specific hardware, but you want to go out with camera using what kind of how you're gonna do sound if you're gonna bring lights, you're gonna figure that out ahead of time because you may have to rent gear. You may have to borrow gear. Might have to buy a gear. Or you might own the gear because I need to figure out, you know, at least beforehand, what's the situation with gear? Another thing you need to plan is schedule and scheduling. So you need a schedule with your interview subject. If you have a crew, he need to schedule with them. Um, s O in all the interviews I've done, like whether they're short or long, I've never really done an interview that's been start to finish less than an hour. You need to keep in mind set up time. It's rare that that it'll take less than 1/2 hour, so you need to schedule how much time you need to set up and figure that out into when you're gonna schedule your interview subject you don't wanna planned so that they arrive right as we're finishing setting up so that when they get there, you know, you put a mic on them, you know, tried a little bit, but then they're ready to go and you're ready to go because everything set up. Another thing to consider is sort of time of day, especially you're dropping in on someone's office. Time of day. It could factor in Teoh. How busy the offices. If you schedule an interview around noon, everyone's gonna be hungry pretty soon. So we're gonna have to figure out lunch, which kind of brings everything to a halt. So it's kind of like an odd time to do it. So either people are going hungry and they're gonna be frustrated. And if you're really longer or people going a little hungry, so you just want to keep in mind when you're scheduling, scheduling around people's hunger levels, scheduling around meal times get rolling around busier times. Traffic rush hour. You want to keep the hour that you schedule the interview in the back your mind. It's not the end all be all like factor like no interviews ever noon. But it's just something to keep in mind that that could play and later how the day and how the interview turns out
9. Filming: never talk a little bit more specifically about production about actually filming interview about the kind of gear you would use. So the basics of what you need to film an interview with the camera and sound equipment for camera. There's a whole spectrum of protective cameras that you can shoot on use a little bit beyond the scope of this course. But you know, we're talking anything from an iPhone Teoh like a cannon and see 300. They use a lot of DSLR still cameras that shoot video. You get really good quality out of them, and they're pretty reasonably priced. I personally use the Panasonic's GH four in the GH three. I'll touch on why I used the GH for a second. DSLR zehr Good. The only downside of them is they don't have a lot of them, don't have great audio. They definitely don't have great on camera audio. You would not want to use that, but they don't have a lot of great audio inputs, so a lot of times you'll end up synchronizing from a separate audio source. Sometimes you can plug directly into camera, depending what kind of camera you get. Severe getting buying a camera for this. You want to make sure that you have an audio input that would make your will make your life easier in post production. So beyond the specifics of the camera, one thing keep in mind while setting up your interview is you wanna have options for post production, you must never gonna keep the interview intact as you recorded it. You're gonna be editing it and you're gonna be shortening part, taking out parts, rearranging parts just to get the point across. More succinctly. You're just maybe, like, rephrase something a little better. But you're gonna be shifting Theo interview clips around a lot, and that creates jump cuts. Two sections of the interview were edited together. You know the background saying the scene because you're on a tripod, most likely, but then the person is jumping around and it's very noticed. It's a noticeable edit, and you'll usually want to try to avoid those. Usually the classic way to do that is you have your film, your film with two cameras. You know, you have your camera, your main camera, usually a wider angle, and then you have a B camera on, and usually would have, you would have a camera operator, and that's like a close up. And so they're usually moving. That came around a little more like following the person. So it's a close up on their face, you know, usually around like bring me like about this. And so this gives you options that editing. So instead of the jump cut of the person jumping around, you would cut from the wide shop to the close up, and now you have more options. So it's sort of smooths over, so it's less noticeable that the two segments were edited together. You have much more of a seamless smooth at it, but for that you need to cameras. And ideally, we needed someone operating the second camera. So it's tough if you're just doing this on your own. The advantage with that a lot of cameras have been coming out with lately is the ability to shoot four K, so you're most likely going to be sending your video to Web or just delivering your video in HD 10 80. Resolution four K is four times bigger than that. So if you sure if you're shooting in four K, you have a much larger screen, and within that screen you can crop and zoom in Teoh frame size that is equivalent to what HD would be 10 80 not lose resolution, not get pixellated. So I've been shooting interviews now and four K, not with a plan to export and four K, but with a plan that I'm gonna refrain later. Like this course has been shot in four K because I messed up a lot and I needed energy like right now, because I messed up a lot and I needed to edit myself. And so I shot this in four K, knowing that I could reframe easily and clean up all the jump cuts that would be here editing out all of my mistakes. So let's talk about sound. As I said earlier sound is really important, especially for an interview. People can forgive bad video, but when you have really bad sound, especially in an interview, it's really distracting and really pull someone out of your film. So I wanna make sure yet clean audio that starts off with a good location, and then you want to make sure you have good microphones, a good mic placement so there's two types of Macron's that you usually use in an interview . The 1st 1 is a Laval ear. I got the microphone at the end. With the cable, the cable will run down the shirt or jacket. You could hide opinion jacket. We're gonna conceal the cable and then a microphone. Either clip on the outside of the clothing that avoids clothing. Russell or, you know, the microphone kind of hits the close but is visible in the shot. Or there's other types of microphones that are flat and are meant to be concealed underneath the clothing, Um, and so you'll never see them in the shot that pick up really good audio. The risk is, sometimes you'll get some clothing. Russell if the person starts moving, that's why it's beneficial if you have the budget to have a sound person who is a pro at placing the microphones and using tricks to add a little padding and buffer between the microphone and the clothing devoid the clothing Russell thin. This microphone will flood into a wireless, usually wireless transmitter, and the receiver will go into the camera or into the sound recording device, such as something like this that has XLR inputs, which are pearl per level connections for audio that a DSLR camera usually wouldn't have, and then the other type of microphone that you would be using. It's a shocking microphone. This is a small one. It's designed for on camera, but you could also amount it elsewhere. They could put this on a stand, and then it would usually be mattered. Obviously, we'd be out of the shop, would have it in the shop, this time for Clarity's purpose, but it would be right above their head, out of the shop as close as possible, pointing down at their mouth. Ideally, you would have both. You'd have both a level ear and shotgun. You know, sometimes you have one of the other. If you have them, it's always safer to use two sources instead of one. Just rustling or one of the sources has issues, so you have your basics covered, your camera and sound sort of your bare minimum to record a video interview. But then you'll need light lighting, goes hand in hand with camera, and how the image looks so really can get away with a lot with your location and just sort of looking at your location and figuring out the best place to place your interview subject and your camera, and you can use your environment to your advantage. The traditional light sources a three point light, which is You have your key light, which is sort of the light that sort of add some shape and definition to your interview subject. You have a fill light, which is usually right behind the camera. Kind of fills in some of the shadows so you don't have a horse harsh shadow line, and then you would have a back white something like, uh, illuminate the background to sort of add some separation between them and the background again. This is beyond the scope of this course in the actual details of lighting. That's your usual contemporary lighting set up. You don't need tohave on actual light. You plug into the wall for all of the sources so you could use a window as your key light and add some and add some definition and shape to your interview subject. You get away with a lot with just moving the camera little bit. To really control your image and use the environment to your advantage. But that said, Ah, lot of times you will want to bring in your own lights. And so there's a lot of different types of lights again, be on the script, this course, but the general lights are tungsten lights, which are lights that you would have seen in your in your light bulb and fluorescence. But the brand name for film is key knows. While tungsten lights were probably easiest and cheapest to get, they get really hot. And so is just one thing to keep in mind. If you're doing an interview, especially long interview, you're most likely gonna have to kill the A C if it's noisy. And then if you have these tungsten lights set up and then you have, like a three point like tungsten light, you got, like 2000 watts of light. Just bear bolds, like turning in this room into an oven. So just one thing to keep in mind as far as what type of light source your think you know, for the interview, things will get really hot. Key knows our fluorescence. They don't get hot, led czar getting a lot better and only desire or another viable stores for light and light pictures that you can buy or rent and bring in and they don't get hot. Keep in mind Ah, B roll that you can film. You wanna get B roll shots? Usually after the interview, after you've heard of what they said. Like if they talk about something like make a mental note to write it down of stuff, you wanna look up later. So if you want film later, so be role of your interview subject Working day in the life of type. Stuff them at the office, then working them, talking to people shots of the office on Get that while you're at location. So with documentaries I like to think of production is basically a way of generating a lot of options for editing When you think about it. In a way, Teoh, give yourself as many options as possible in editing
10. Working With Your Subject: So you got a camera figured out. You got your sound figured out. Your location, You're all set up, You're ready to go, Ready to shoot the interview. So let's talk about actually doing the interview and some tips on how to best work with your interview subject and get and get the best out of them. So just keep in mind. It's a very unnatural environment, especially for people who don't do a lot of media appearances. So I like to reassure the birthday. I'm interviewing that, you know, I want to make them look good. There's not live. This will be edited, Uh, if they want. If they mess up in a question or they feel like they stumbled and they want to redo it, they can stop. They can start over again. Not a problem. Also like to tell them that I want My questions won't be in the final product, so they need to incorporate the context of my questions into their answers. Basically, they need to repeat the answer as they start the question. So if I say what is your favorite color and they say blue doesn't have the context, so it's like what is your favorite color. My favorite color is blue. Um, and then as I as I start theater view, sometimes you know you might. They might need to be reminded, and it certainly okay, just kind of pause them at the beginning. The the answer, and then just remind them to incorporate the question into their answer. Don't be afraid to direct or guide the interview subject. If you need them to say something again, maybe say a little shorter, maybe say it in a more concise way. Feel free to offer that to them or just ask them. And don't be afraid to ask. Sometimes, you know, you might ask the same question a few different ways throughout the interview. Just get different answers or just to get, you know, maybe they explain something a little differently, or they say something a little differently. That is actually better than the first time they explained it on. But also don't be afraid to ask dumb questions. You know you can even practice it like this. I know this is a silly question, but can you explain the law? You know, sometimes we don't want someone to think that we're dumb or we don't go stuff. But in the case of interview, you kind of what you want to ask them questions, sometimes just because you need them to explain. Or you want them to explain some basic stuff so your audience can understand. One thing to keep in mind when you're doing the interview is to keep track of your verbal cues. So, like normally, when we're having a conversation with someone, it's pretty normal for us to do things like Okay, that's see are safe things. Teoh, a SRI assure The person we're talking to that were paying attention, however, in the case of an interview, Those air terrible because now you have audio. You have a person on camera talking, and then you hear someone off camera yet, and it ruins. The audio takes some practice, but you need to keep track on. Be aware. If you're doing that, to not do it on, there's other ways, you know, maintain eye contact. You know you can not. Your head you can, you know, do nonverbal cues to reassure the person that yes, you are paying attention and listening without making noises so you have your question list and you definitely want to use that as a guide, but you don't have to stick to that as, uh, the end all be all, like, no change guide to the interview. Eso If the person says something, the peaks, your interest or you think there might be more there, you know, totally go down that path. Ask them about that. A lot of times you can listen to the end of their questions and kind of playoff that, uh, you know, they tell you about a case volume like they tell you about they got their 1st 300 How did that make you feel like? How did you feel about that? Like, what was going through your mind? Probably questions I didn't have. But, you know, they mentioned an important life story. I'll ask if you follow up questions or kind of get into their emotion or what was going through the mind beyond that. So use your questions as a guide. You know, once that that route you've sort of, like, explored it, uh, then, you know, just come back to your questions and see you know what was next. And sometimes people even ask, you know, you want to talk about this. You talk about that. You don't want to shut him down. You could say I will come back to that towards the end of the review. If you do that, make sure you make a note that, yes, Come back to that at the end. You know, maybe it'll interrupt the flow kind of like through their state of mind. So you don't want to talk. You want them to go on this tangent. But if you know if it's something that is important enough to them to bring up and suggest that it's definitely worth pursuing, uh, and asking them about it, you know, feel free, definitely want them. Teoh feel comfortable in open. And, you know, you could do that by allowing them giving them the freedom. Teoh talk about what they want. Really good General guideline is to end the interview with the question. Is there anything else you'd like to add, or is there anything else we don't cover that you feel is worth mentioning? That's a really great open ended question that really gives the interview subject permission. Teoh, talk about whatever they want, you know, they look to you as the authorities, and they might not feel appropriate. Teoh bring up other things that aren't on questions, so they might be too afraid to suggest that. So then, if you ask them if there is anything else that gives them permission, Teoh, bring up other topics or suggests, like I've gotten a lot of great answers from that question.
11. Create the Radio Edit: All right. So you shot your interviews. You've got your archival material, your B roll, and you're ready to begin editing depending how long the interviews are. You did and how expanse of your project is. Sometimes it is worthwhile to get your interviews transcribed with time codes. And so what that means is you'll have a word for word transcription of the interview. And then you have time could markers throughout this text document. And so you'll have a timecode stamp for every 30 seconds. So, you know Oh, I could go find this. Go to this number. You know, let's say, like, two minutes 30 seconds on, then like, I'll be able to find this moment of when the person is talking about this. And so these air beneficial on long projects because you wanna have somewhere where you can run a search and look through the transcripts. If you're looking for a specific line or you're like, Oh, I need this person talking about lane oil, I need them talking about this very specific thing, and you need to run a search for transcripts really help a lot with that. Transcripts also help before you start editing to create what basically was called a paper at it, where you basically start pulling the best lines from all the transcripts and all the interviews, and you kind of arrange them in a rough script and a rough border that you wanted to be edited. But it's quicker and easier for a project. If you're doing a large project toe, work with text lines and paper and create a rough order that way and then translate that to your sequence on your timeline with your edit versus running through all of the interviews on playing them in real time and then editing them and organizing them, you can get lost in the footage. Sometimes there's only really, if you're looking, working on a long form project. If you're doing something that is shorter or something for Web, something worthy interview is maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes. You can really work with it on the timeline in your editing program. I'm gonna be using Final Cut Pro X, but you can use any editing software out there. Adobe Premiere at the Media Composer I'm movie, so we're in final Cut Pro X right now. This is the Strike Project folder eso when you first heard project, you're gonna want to import your media. So the advantage with final cut Pro 10 is the ability to add keywords and other editing programs. These would usually be bins or folders. The event with keywords is you can apply a key word in reply multiple keywords to the same portion of a clip. This is a great way to organize your footage. So you see here I have a lot of keywords, sort of just highlighting what the shots are. Either some action in the shot or location of the shot s o. I could better so I could find a better later on when I was editing general thumb. That I find is the more time you put in to organizing and adding information to the clips you import. It pays off dividends later on in the edit when you're trying to find it, especially phonic a pro X, It helps a lot. Teoh add keywords, organizer footage Over here in your properties panel, there's tons of areas to add all sorts of metadata info and then right up here, you can run searches on. It'll search for through clip names. It'll search through notes you add, and so it's a great way with you. Add notes later on to come back and search and find clips. Now Strike was a 12 minute film on If you get as you can see here, my radio edit was a whopping two hours and 42 minutes, which I would say is way too long. I basically I should have done more work with the transcripts. I mostly did most of the editing and figuring out the story on the timeline, which I've learned from, and I would base it. I would say I would have done more work ahead of time. What I learned from this and what I do now is work more from the transcripts and create a rough script using excerpts from the interviews on paper. And then I'll create the sequence from that, and I started off with a shorter sequence now and then, As you see, I basically cut out of our and the next cuts ran through and it started slashing and burning, and that's kind of the name of the game. Once you start, I just want to cut down, cut down, cut down redundancy stuff It's not relevant stuff that just doesn't fit with your story, so you could see sort of times really drastically come down every time I would go through it. I was making you copy so good for hours 42 minutes to about two hours 1 38 1 17 25 minutes , 11 minutes. This cut is where I stopped cutting down and when I started really editing and fine tuning the film. One thing I like to do with the radio edit, and it's a nice thing that you could do in final Cut X is you can change the names of the clip. So once I put the clips on the timeline, you're able to change the name of them either up here in the Properties panel or on the side over here. So I would change the name of each clip to a very short summary of what they're talking about. So this way I could skin through the project and have a general idea of where I'm at and what the clips are about. And so it made it a lot easier to rearrange and work with the clips because I knew roughly where I was in the story, I wouldn't I wouldn't have to play back all the time to find out what I'm looking at since obviously is very hard to visually see what each sections about just because of their interview clips, and they all look the same. So another advantage Final cut taxes on the side. Here you can see a list of all your clips, and so when you have it right now, you can have all of your names were not here, and you can have notes and is a very easy way to skim through and look for clips, and you also run searches and it'll search for the words here. So it's a really good way to find clips that you're working with and your radio edit on your timeline. Another thing I'd like to do is title cards, sort of as chapter headers or what I division in the story as the different sections of the story. These won't be in the final film and more for me. Teoh split up sections of the story so I could work on this one section of this story and really cut it down and find tune it and Once I create these blocks, sometimes I'll find that they work better reorganized. But at least I have these blocks the sections of the story that I could work with and move around, and it makes it a lot easier. Teoh work with the story, rearranged elements of story and not get lost in the weeds. So to say, you keep cutting, cutting, cutting and kill, it comes to a length that you're happy with their That's near the run time that you have in mind. Your next deliverable, for your assignment will be to create a radio edit of your short film of your project. On. This would be incorporate all the interviews he shot, just focusing on the audio and putting it together in a chronological or the order that you would like to see your film, or that you expect to see your film turnout Sure about on the site. If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and I look forward to seeing them
12. Tips for Editing Documentaries: Let's cover some tips for editing documentaries. It's beyond the scope of this course to do a detailed how to edit, tutorial and talk about you editing software. A. Talk a bit about tips specifically for editing documentaries, but you can use entity any editing software I'm gonna be using. Final Cut Pro X. You can use Adobe Premiere. You can use that media composer I movie, so once you have your radio at it, super condensed down to roughly pretty close Teoh where you want it to be, run time wise, then you want to start polishing it. And mainly the main game is you want to have, like nice flow, nice continuity. You don't have a lot of jump cuts like a really rough at it. I don't want to deliver that. You don't really want to show that to people. Okay, so we're back in final cut Pro X, and once you get your radio at it, cut down to the link that you want to work with. You have a lot of jump cuts, so trump cuts are these hard edits that we get when we edit the interview down and because basically have a locked off backgrounds of background stays the same, but it's very obvious that they're edits in the film because our interview subject is jumping around with every edit very hard cut. It's very abrupt, and usually this is a very specific style you want to go for. Usually we're trying to get rid of these and avoid that to make the film look more seamless , more smooth, more polished and the edits less noticeable. The best way to get rid of jump cuts is to start adding bureau and B roll and all the archival material. This is the stuff that you we're shooting while you're filming your interview. This is the archival material. You're researching these. There may be some shots you shot specifically for where your film s. So this is what you start putting on top of your interview footage to cover up and hide those edits So you could see here I have a longer clip. I'm covering up a few edits here. Ah, here I have more footage, more bowling footage on that's covering up these edits basically throughout the film, on putting as many clips as possible. That fits the story to hide these edits there'll be times when you don't necessarily want to see footage and you want to see your interview subjects like you're telling a story. You want to see them eso In this version of the project, the work's already done, but basically this is when you would start switching between camera angles. Uh, if you had two cameras set up. So for this interview, I think I had about three cameras set up, but usually I would rotate between two. I had a close up on Bill, and then I had ah, wide shot. But I'm coming back between different angles. So the edits. You don't really get the jump cuts the editor of us noticeable. It flows. Mauritz seemed more seamless to go to a more recent project that I did. This interview was shot on four K with this interview, I was able to reframe and zoom in to create different angles and hide the edits. It looks a little blurry now just because it's playing back in a pretty quality. But when it renders out, it all renders out at the same resolution. So when you're listening to what you want it to sound, you want to flow really well. You want people to sound really smooth, and you'll do that by removing their arms, removing the gaps from of their positive. So they so they speak. Remove the arms. Eso the will speak in a fluid, smooth manner. You kind of your making them sound better than they did. But what people watching your film, it'll sound a lot better now. I'm not saying cut every single, pause out every single gap out and just have everything like slam together, back to back to back to back You definitely, you know, you really have to Really, you have to listen your subject matter and what's happening with a story like There is definitely a time for a dramatic pause when someone is telling a story that you know is really emotional or really powerful. The pauses there are necessary. So another edit trick that you can do to smooth up some hard cuts like maybe you haven't edit between two clips and it feels kind of abrupt. It could be within the same interview clip. Or it could be and edit between two different interviews to other clips, and maybe it just feels a little harsh like you come. You feel the editor just feels a little abrupt. Anyone smooth it out. So trick for that is L and J cuts. And so basically what these are, I have one right here. This would be a j cut because the party is going this way. Normally, when you haven't edit, you have the Internet, it with the video and the audio and sinks. If you see here, the video in the audio are both have the same edit at the same time. But if you're a split apart, your clips with your video and your audio and extend the audio over another clip. So basically the audio from one clip is playing over the video of another clip that would be an l cutter J cut. I mean, the name just It's the same exact techniques just really depends if you have the audio extending this way over this clip, or if you have the audio extending this way over this clip. So when this city has seen place back, you start hearing the audio from the next clip before you see it, and it smooths out this edit certain fuel as abrupt. And so it's just a trick you can do to mix things up, smooth out some abrupt cuts and make the film flow a little better. So you want to keep going through your your film, cleaning up the edits, polishing it, putting b roll, inappropriate spots, putting archival material. And this is where it really starts to come to life, and we're gonna finish it in the next lesson.
13. Polishing Your Doc: alright, polishing your doc. So this is where you want to finish out and clean up and make a nice, really smooth finish film again. All of the technical details that I'll cover a Z beyond the scope of this course. But there's other courses here in skill share where you can learn about them. But I'm gonna come to cover the broad, uh, topics of how you would finish your film and things you want to keep in mind when finishing your project. So as you're editing, I find it's useful. Teoh, as I get later into the process to start finding music and start incorporating music because music helps a lot to really sort of generate the mood. Um, you don't rely on music for the mood. You want that to be your subject matter, but it helps enhance it. And it also gives you something to edit. Teoh Um especially your music as beats and stuff you're gonna your your edits. They're gonna be dependent on the music. So I like to bring the music in about mid point and editing Teoh, lay it down to have something to work with. No, what's gonna be there and have something to edit with, and it also helps with smoothing out the cuts, knowing what content is gonna be there. And it's good. It's good to work with the music also with music sound effects. You know, sometimes I find archival material and really bring it to life. It's really helpful to find some basic sound effect, you know, if you if it's like some old footage and a crowd, you know, just to kind of find some generic crowd noises and bring it in very low volume. But it really brings that archival material life on DSO. You want to bring that in as well, to really start generating the feel of what the finished products gonna look like so and working with documentaries lots of times, you'll have still photos to put into your film, and you can put him in and keep them static so that you just just frame pops up and it's the same still frame for three seconds. Five seconds. Films a visual medium, and you want to make a little more dynamic and make the photos come alive and a little more interesting. So there's a couple tricks you can do to make still photographs a little bit more dynamic and bring them alive. One of most common ones is Pan and Zoom, or The Ken Burns effect was made famous by Ken Burns and his Civil War and PBS documentaries. Apple calls it The Ken Burns Effect s Basically it's built in the final cut, but you can do it with key frames with scaling and position. But it is very easy way an apple. It's in the crop, the Ken Burns effect, and you basically just draw, start frame and an end frame, and it animates the movement. In between eso, it's basically just panning and zooming across your still photograph and adding some movement to it. So another thing you do is bring photographs into other programs, like aftereffects. Teoh animate them together. Atmore whips and pans, and you can even cut out elements and really get elaborate with how much you want to animate. The photograph was just some basic flying around with the camera and aftereffects and adding these whip pans just in still photographs for strike here, I cut out part of bowling Alley shot and then added a time lapse skyline in the background to create a little bit of movement here. Remember that a lot of things in and the editing programs are key favorable, so you can animate filters. You can animate effects. So ah, lot of these photos in this project I animated tilt shift effects. Just add a little bit of movement to the photographs, and then you could see on top of it, I have a little bit of lens flare on. Basically, I just animated where the focus goes. It kind of draws you to the eye so you can see. As the quip goes, the focus goes as well. Just have a little bit of movement to the photograph. And so there's just a few ways Teoh add some movement photographs. But there are tons of ways, tons of filters, tons of effects you can do as you're wrapping up the narrative structure of your film and polishing it. You might have some gaps and some sections where you realize that, like like this portion of story was too hard to explain. Sometimes you may want incorporate a title card or two because sometimes someone could explain something and it takes 30 seconds, and you can get that same amount of information across in one or two sentences. In the case of Strike, I used it towards the end with Bill when you had a stroke. Just because it was pretty complicated to explain. So the easier to just sort of get it across with some title cards. Straightforward with some music a little bit more dramatic it sometimes you might use title cards. A few title cards at the beginning of your film, just sort of paint. The picture could save 30 60 seconds of someone explaining everything like one or two. Well written sentences can set up an entire back story so you can start your film right there. People who know the basic information. And then you just jump into your story. Once you have picture lock, which is basically your title cards, your interview, your everything visual ISS set where it's gonna go now, it's easier to find, too in the music. Fine tune the music use. Basically, it's not like you're gonna be doing work that's gonna be erased or overridden because something changed. Eso you want to focus on cleaning up your the audio of the interview a day very basic level with this and background noise, there's some filters, especially final cut out of a few built in filters you can remove hum. You can remove background noises to a certain level, and it's also good to listen. Teoh your video honest on speakers that you would expect your audience to listen to. So you know, it's really nice to have, like Sony Studio headphones to go over your ear, and they sound great if you're doing something for the Web. Like, most likely people are not only gonna be watching it on the Web, going to Washington on their cell phones, uh, you know the audio there isn't that great? So it's it's it's good to test your footage and listen to it on a on your computer speakers . You know, if you have time like export your video, put it on your phone. Listen how it sounds on dso you. The most important thing you want to make sure is that people can hear what your interview subject is saying. Everything else is secondary. You want to make sure that your music not to allow that your sound effects aren't too loud , but definitely if you're do editing on a computer like unplug your studio speakers, unplug your headphones and listen to it on the speakers that were coming out of your computer, at least to see how it sounds. If I have the time, I like to do some color correction, uh, kind of just basically adding a little bit more contrast if you have maybe recorded with the wrong color settings or maybe a light change when you're doing the interview and the settings were adjusted, you can fix for that. Try to make the interview look consistent. It was long interview. You know, you might have a light change throughout the day so you can adjust the levels. Try to balance it out there. There's a lot of tutorials for color, but I find even just a little bit of color. Correction helps a lot and polishing the film, making it look nice and smooth. Condition of color, correction like transitions, some overlay effects and flares. Sometimes that helps bring, especially with still photographs that helped bring everything to life. It helps, um, create a more finished, polished looking project, and then finally, once you're done, you want export it and ship. It is we get to watch your hard work, put it up, share it with other people, which is the whole reason you start in the first place because you won't have a story that you wanted to tell and you wanted to share it with other people. And now you can. This is the final deliverable of your project. Export your polished finished film and share it with the course. And I really look forward to watching it. And if you have any questions, feel free to shoot in my way.
14. Closing: That's the end of the course. Thank you so much for watching. I hope that you learned a lot and picked up a few tips on how to do really good interviews and capture someone's story. A lot of the techniques here you can apply to a lot of different fields. If you have any questions, please feel free to shoot in my way. I will do my best to answer them, and I look forward to seeing the work you come out with. Thank you.
Joey Daoud, Documentary Filmmaker
