Production - Creating an Interesting Interview [RESEARCH]

Our project is about my journey into achieving a life's dream of becoming a race car driver. The majority of the journey will be following me as I go about the various challenges needed to be a racing driver. However, to ground this documentary and introduce a factual element, there will be a number of interviews with professional racing drivers.

The problem with having a number of interviews is that we do not want to build up pace and tension towards the race and then be back, sitting down doing another interview. I wanted to ensure that this documentary had a very similar tone throughout, and while part of that comes from me as a contributor, some of it is also from the planning of scenes like this interview.

Therefore this blog post will be dedicated to looking into how I can make interviews in our documentary interesting as we need to find the balance between factual storytelling and showing my story and what I have learned. This blog will look at the various ways in which we could film our interviews so that they fit the style shown throughout the documentary.

While doing my research, it was apparent that the best interviews, both in terms of visuals and story, are those that take place as a natural conversation. Heavily staged, sit down interviews don't typically work in the style of documentary that we are making. A reference I have from pre-production is the documentary Icarus. This documentary has a lot of interviews with fellow contributors, but they are filmed in a way which makes them feel a part of the story rather than segments within the documentary exploring facts and information.

It was my goal to ensure the interviews in our documentary felt like the rest of the documentary. I did not want to jump back and forth with the tone as I feel that would damage the documentary as a whole. I started my research by looking at documentaries similar to the one I am creating, to see how they visually film their interviews, as well as how they appear in the overall picture. I looked at a few notable sports documentaries to understand how they conducted interviews to help me decide what approaches I wanted to take.

Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story

One of the most powerful sports documentaries of the past 10 years was Alex Holme's "Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story".
The use of interviews in this documentary is one to show perspective on the story. The whole documentary is basically told through these interviews and their framing and shot choice is interesting.

While this documentary is different altogether to ours, the style of this interview can be taken inspiration from. Both the top and middle interviews are conducted in a very controlled environment and we do not see the interviewer. This style seems to work for more serious topics as it allows us to focus on the person being interviewed, rather than the interviewee or the background. While our documentary is about my story, there could be an option to use an interview like this as it would allow the viewer to take in some of the hard truths about motorsport without exterior interference.

I understand that for "Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story" they needed these hard-hitting interviews throughout the documentary to ensure the message had maximum impact on the viewer. But I am not sure that in "Dream Chaser" we could do this because these interviews would be a very strange cut from the actuality that will be placed either side of it. I think that there is a possibility for an interview like this to be included, but we need to transition to it in a way that is not jarring. Saying this, I think we should avoid interviews like these as our story is about my journey into motorsport, and conducting an interview like this would take the emphasis off me while also bringing a different tone to the project altogether. We are not trying to expose anything in motorsport, therefore an interview style like this would probably look very different to the rest of our documentary.

I am certainly not ruling out that we conduct an interview in this style, but I would struggle to visualise how it fits in with the rest of our documentary as we would take the emphasis off my story and focus on someone else. I will share this feedback with the group and value their perspective. We expect to have three or four interviews in the documentary and it would be good to mix up the styles to ensure that they are not all the same.

However, an excerpt from a TV interview later on in the documentary highlights a style that we could use in our documentary. A sit down interview in which both the person with knowledge (in our case a professional race driver) and myself could have a conversation about one of the key subjects that I have highlighted in the script. I like this style as it will allow a camera to be close up on the person of interest as well as allowing a wide shot of the two of us together. 

I don't see us using this style in such a controlled environment as it detracts from our surroundings, so I expect to use this on location in an area that seems suitable. For example; if we are at a race track we could film at the back of the pitlane with the cars in the shot or at a bench or seating arrangement at a venue with obvious iconography in the back of the shot. As long as we set the scene beforehand with GV's of the track and possibly some shots of the person we are interviewing out on the track, then I think this would be a powerful interview style.  

This style allows me to still be on the screen and with the planned multiple camera setups, we will also have a medium close up on myself to show the reactions to what is being spoken about. Three cameras here would allow a close up on both myself and the other contributor as well as a wide shot which would allow for seamless changes between the two close-ups as well as a nice establishing angle. This is certainly a style I want going forward as it uses some of the powerful features of the first controlled style (above) as well as allowing myself to still be on the screen which helps show I am directly learning from the advice that I am being given. This style also lends itself to be more visually interesting as we can find suitable areas to have a relevant backdrop. 

Long Shot

The 2017 documentary by Jacob LaMendola is a brutal mix of how sports saved a man from being wrongly accused of murder. This documentary is shorter than most and my thinking is that they may focus on smaller interviews because of this. I wanted to understand how you get information out of people in a short time, as this is going to be one of our biggest hurdles in the production of "Dream Chaser".

 The problem is that in this documentary they focus on extreme close-ups in a controlled environment which is not the style I was thinking of when planning my interviews. This material is a good reference for our "Diary Room" sequence however, as it shows us the importance of lighting, even if the backdrop could be more visually interesting. I expect they made the backdrop this way because they want us to focus on the main character and his story and it certainly works as these "interviews" give a powerful first-hand view of the events in the documentary.

While these scenes are powerful they are definitely not the style of interview that I think will work in our documentary. It is important to understand this as sometimes it is hard to visualise how you want something to work until you see it first hand. It is not an interview style that we will pursue, but what interests me is the various shot sizes used, some of which we could use for the Diary Room. I thought we could possibly just use one camera for those sequences, but after seeing this, the power of a close-up and extreme close up is undeniable. Therefore, when planning and testing the Diary Room I am going to experiment with shot sizes and see how powerful an extreme close up could be for us. This is certainly something I had not considered, but I am sure we will now have multiple cameras for these scenes.

This research has certainly shown me an interview style that I do not want to use and that is as important as finding one I do like. I know that this style could be used in some ways for our Diary Room sequences which means this research is certainly not lost. I feel that if we interviewed an external contributor in this way, it would be in contrast with the rest of the documentary and jarring cutting in an out of it. This research has certainly shown me that less formal interviews are the style that I am after for this documentary, otherwise, the style and tone will be all over the place, which would certainly damage its credibility.

Free Solo

Undoubtedly one of the most powerful documentaries of recent years, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi's FREE SOLO highlights one of the most extraordinary feats known to man. Their use of "interviews" where they quiz the people of importance throughout are very powerful and I have taken inspiration from these in my plans. I doubt we will be able to create such a level of authenticity when getting answers from contributors, but it allows me to understand that there are different ways we can get the answers we want, other than the typical sit-down interview in a dark room.

Throughout the documentary, we are introduced to characters, including the main one, Alex, who speaks about this experience in a very honest and reflective way. These are powerful because they are not meticulously planned in a sit-down environment, rather on the move as the event is happening. While it will be impossible to interview drivers and fellow contributors in this way, we can take inspiration from the fact that these scenes are powerful because of the people in them rather than the setting.

Therefore, an idea which has sparked from this documentary is doing a "walk and talk" with a driver, possibly around a workshop or car holding facility which will allow us to capture answers in a scene which looks like we are simply having a discussion as we go through this area. This would take away some of the sense that this interview has been planned and set up because of the movement of the camera as well as us as contributors.

There seems to be so much power in having a discussion in an area which is natural, rather than one which is forced upon the contributors in this form interview. We get to see them in their habitat and because of that, they are allowed to open up and explain their honest thoughts. The problem with interviews which are staged to the nth degree is that the contributor may feel the need to rehearse answers and be perfect. I would much rather have a documentary with honest and rambly answers, rather than a PR interview with the exact answer we wanted. The sense of actuality allows the answers to have more weight as we get the sense that these answers are coming from the heart rather than a script.

I want to take this on going forward and ensure that we complete at least two of our interviews in this style as I see it as very powerful in a documentary which has such a personal story like ours. I also don't want all of our documentary interviews to look the same, so in a future blog post, I will be discussing the importance of our interviews looking unique as well as what answers we will be capturing from each one.

Overview

It is clear to me that to make a documentary like ours work, the interviews need to be seamless and feel a part of the story. As was seen in the first couple of reference examples, highly staged interviews take away some of the personality of the contributor and we don't get a broader perspective. They worked for the documentary they were in, but trying to visualise these in our documentary is nearly impossible.

The walk and talk is a style that I will definitely be using at some point in our documentary, but I want to ensure each interview is unique in its filming style. This may lead us to have more formal interviews to ensure they all look different, but it is imperative that we transition those particular scenes in and out in the correct manner. If we don't, then it will be jarring for the viewer and take away from the tone and style we have placed throughout. I am not a fan of the sit down formal style so I will adapt it in a way that means it feels more like the rest of the journey. This could be done through the use of cutaways and different shot sizes. The background for a sit-down interview would also be important, to ensure it gives the correct tone and is consistent throughout our documentary.

Overall, to make an interesting interview it's clear to me that actuality chats are a better way to get across the message in a documentary of our style. These will allow the documentary to feel the same all the way through and doing so will allow the story to be clear and honest throughout. There are different styles of interviews that I want to conduct in this documentary and ensuring they are all subtly different is also key for me as a director. Giving everyone a unique style will ensure the viewer knows these interviews are all different. 

I am excited to get to work on the interviews and we have a number of fantastic contributors planned for this documentary. They will allow me to learn a lot before my first motor race and including such professionals in our documentary will allow viewers to understand the lengths we have gone to in creating this piece. Including professional drivers also grounds the documentary with key information only people with real-world experience can speak about. These thoughts would mean a lot less if I were to read them online or speak to a new driver like myself, as the full perspective is not shown. I am very confident in creating three or four very visually pleasing interviews which highlight key areas of motorsport that the general public may know little about.