How to Interview for a Documentary Film

By Kevin Lindenmuth
Kevin Lindenmuth

Kevin Lindenmuth has worked in the film/video business for more than 20 years. He received his B.A. in film/video production from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1987. Most of his professional life was spent working in New York City in all the major aspects of video production. Kevin is an independent movie maker who helped pioneer SOV movie making in the early 90’s and paved the way for their acceptance to mega-chain video stores with his well-received vampire movie Addicted To Murder (1995). He has produced 18 genre movies (12 now available on DVD) and five documentaries (broadcast on PBS). He is the author of two books on independent filmmaking, both published by McFarland Books Publishers (1998 and 2001) and was interviewed in the book "The Independent Filmmakers Guide to Writing a Business Plan for Investors" (by Gabriel Campisi, 2004). Occasionally, his articles can be seen in Fangoria magazine.

www.lindenmuth.com

Professional advice on filming your own documentary! Learn about how to interview experts and how to produce a documentary film in this free video.

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Video transcription

When you interview a person for a documentary, the best way to do it is this. You could videotape them in their living room you could videotape them at work, whatever but just make sure you do it in a quiet place where you don't have any background noise because again you want the audio to be as good as possible. For lights you usually have to have a big light in front of them, one to kind of back light them. It's really important that also the lights reflect in their eyes that you have pin pricks of light in their eyes because it just makes them seem more alive and more engaging. They never ever should be looking at the camera. If somebody is asking them questions, the interviewer should be seated alongside the camera so that when they're talking they looking off to the side like this as opposed to the camera. When they're doing the interview and when they first start talking they'll be nervous and they'll be going back and forth, back and forth and you have to remind them, look at the interviewer. It's always good to have another person there and you put them in a chair right next to the camera so the person talking could just focus on them and after a while, they'll forget about the camera. Because they're usually, if never been interviewed at all and this is like a whole new experience for them, they're nervous, these people are nervous so the first couple questions you ask them, ask them again towards the end because they'll give you much better answers, they'll be more relaxed, it'll flow more, it will be a lot better so definitely repeat those last couple questions. In terms of the questions, I'll send them a list of what I might ask them beforehand, I'll email them so they could get prepared. When they're answering the questions since I don't have any voice over narration and I have the people in the documentary tell the story, I ask them a question like "When did you first start doing this? or When did you first start having a reaction to the disease" or whatever? I'll have them paraphrase the question into their answer so they'll kind of rephrase it. They'll be making a statement as opposed to sounding like they're answering a question so that's really important because you want them to convey all the information as clearly as possible. You don't necessarily have to have a sit down interview like what I'm doing now. You could do like a hand held interview if they're out and about at work or doing some type of sport or something. It just adds more variety rather than just have a talking head. So the more varied, you could do both, the more varied the better.