From the course: Learning Documentary Video: 1 Planning and Pre-production

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Conducting pre-interviews

Conducting pre-interviews

From the course: Learning Documentary Video: 1 Planning and Pre-production

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Conducting pre-interviews

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- Once you're set with a good interview plan, it's time to begin pre-interviewing your main subjects. Now the pre-interview is an opportunity for you and your subjects to talk through the main points that you're going to explore in the actual interview. So it's important to go into this conversation really knowing the main ideas that you want to explore in your documentary and especially to understand how you hope your interview subject can contribute to that vision. In a pre-interview, you won't go too deep into the interview content itself. Rather, it's more of a chance to establish a rapport and make the subject feel as comfortable as possible about their participation in the documentary before the cameras start rolling, while also further assessing the subject's knowledge of the topics that you want them to speak about. During the pre-interview, you'll try to avoid eliciting any significant type of detailed or emotional response from the subject. Save the goods for the actual…

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