Even with documentary films and interviews, it is important to have a goal—a point that you wish to explore and develop. For example, in the preliminary stages of our work, we created a documentary film, meant to showcase the National Conversation on Writing and to provide an example for others interested in joining the effort. Our work began by trying to showcase the following points:

• Writing is pervasive and, in broad ways, everyone is a writer
• Often, people move from thinking they’re not writers to thinking about writing in deeper ways

For the initial NCoW video, Who is a Writer? What Writers Tell Us, we began with the following guiding questions; but feel free to extend your work from this starting point:

• Who writes, and why do they do it?
• Who reads writing, and what do they get from it?
• What kinds of writing are meaningful for what people, and why?

If you’d like to make your own film, here’s some advice that may help:

Notes on Settings

• If want to have the questioners on camera, you’ll need two cameras
• Consider both one-on-one OR small group interviews—but consider background, noise levels, and other technical facets to assure that what you hear will be captured in usable ways

Some Possible Locations

• Coffee shops
• Libraries
• Bookstores
• Malls
• Schools (though permissions might be more difficult there)
• Office cafeterias or other workplace settings

If you don’t feel qualified with video techniques, think about enlisting students in your communications program, or conducting audio interviews; digital audio recorders are quite inexpensive and relatively easy to use.  You still may need, however, the capability to do some audio editing (again, communications students might be a great help in this—perhaps ask colleagues to make this a class project!). And if you do audio interviews, consider taking some still photographs as well, so that the audio can be accompanied by some visuals.

Advice on Shooting Conditions and Specifications

The overall look of your project will be improved to the extent that interviews shot in discrete locations are technically similar.  Here’s some advice from our tech experts that will make your product more effective and later editing easier:

• Plan your shooting location/s carefully so that you will have strong light on the interview subject—be sure to shoot with the dominant light source to the cameraperson’s back, taking care that the cameraperson’s shadow does not fall on the interview subject.
• If your camera tells you that the subject is overexposed, do not shoot in those conditions.  If you intend to shoot at night (say on a street corner or outside a building), plan to light the interview subject.  Daylight or indoor shooting is preferable.
• Plan your shooting location so that you do not have individuals standing or walking behind the interview subject; if possible, position the subject 2-3 feet in front of a stationary background.  If you are shooting in a mall or public area, this is very important, as you do not want incidental persons to be identifiable in your footage.

Too much variation in composition will make overall coherence difficult to achieve.  Consider the following:

• In general, you should shoot the interview subject from the front, with his/her head and shoulders filling the frame.  Watch for glare off eye-glasses.  Position the camera so that you do not need to zoom to get the subject in the frame in this way.
• Unless you are shooting the scene with two cameras—one on the interview subject and one on the interviewer—keep the interviewer out of the camera shot.  Do not swing the camera back and forth between the interviewer and the subject, and do not shoot over the interviewer’s shoulder.
• Never zoom in or out while the subject is answering a question.  You can create zoom effects in post-production if they are necessary.
• Do not shoot without a tripod unless you have an experienced cameraperson using a shoulder-mounted camera.  The image stabilizer on consumer cameras softens movement, but it does not eliminate it.  Interviews with jerky camera movement will likely be unusable.
• Try to use an external microphone to capture the interview.  The condenser microphone built into the camera is sometimes not effective.  Almost all cameras have a microphone input; it’s best to use such a camera for this project.  If possible, keep the microphone out of the shot, but remember that the purpose of using the mic is to ensure good sound quality.  Also remember that the subject’s voice is what is important.  Don’t swing the mic back and forth between the interviewer and the subject; instead, keep it positioned at a consistent distance from the subject.  If your camera has a mic input, it will also have a headphone input; the person operating the camera or holding the microphone should wear headphones.  This might seem like technical overkill, but even the buds that came with your I-Pod will improve your control of the sound.  Note that while many adjustments can be made to the picture in post-production, in large part, what you hear when shooting is what everyone is going to hear in the finished project.  A weak voice, a hot or distorted voice, buzzing, hissing, or excess competing ambient noise will make a given shot unusable.
• If you use a clip mic, do a test with the mic ahead of time. If you’re using a boom mic, be sure to hold it outside of the shot.
• Timecode:  This is important:  Every time a video camera is turned on, the “timecode” is reset; you never notice this unless you need to edit the video using a software program.  The software will “capture” the tape only between timecode breaks.  Timecode breaks are very time-consuming.  You contribute to the overall efficiency of the project by keeping the number of times you turn the camera on and turn off to an absolute minimum.  Plan to plug the camera in to ac power, or take lots of battery power.  Use the PAUSE function on the camera between interviews.  If you have a lot of “dead time,” press the power button on and off periodically to keep the camera from timing off.  Your help with this will save hours and hours of time in editing.
• In order to have more than just “talking heads,” you may want to show something of the setting in which the interviews were shot.  Either before or after your interviews, take some “establishing shots”:  if you’re interviewing in a mall, take some pictures of the exterior and the concourse, for example.  (Take care not to get identifiable individuals in these shots.)  You may also want images of the interviewer, which can be sliced in at any point.  Provide some footage of the interviewer (from the perspective of an interviewee) in one of those often-satirized shots that show the interviewer listening attentively.

Please remember to have interviewees sign a consent form