Autism Speaks

the story speaks for itself

Yesterday, we started talking about interview techniques.

The process for eliciting soundbites is no different than the process for shooting visuals.

You are not there to record every stupid thing that happens and 'hope' you find something that might work when you get into the edit.

As with shooting, the process of acquiring soundbites is a discipined and as focused.

In this piece, the VJ spent an entire day with this mother and child not filming.

He wanted to understand the story, and he wanted them to become comfortable enough with the camera and his presence so that when he returned the next day he would be able to capture, in 3 minutes, what a day in her life is like.

There is no narration here.

Instead, the mother tells her own story.

Some of this is on camera, but much of it was done after he was finished with initial filming.

A very good, and very effective way of getting someone to narrate their own story is to shoot it, then do a rough cut on FCP.

When the rough cut is done, sit the subject down in front of the laptop, mic her, turn on your camera and then play back the cut.  As the cut is being played, ask her to narrate the story for you.  Why pretend this doesn't happen? Open up the process.

You can do this several times over.  You can also stop and ask questions that the cut elicits.

This is how you 'focus' the interview