Just Give Me The Questions! Why Do I Need The Book?
March 20th, 2011This is actually a great question. If you haven’t tried to conduct one of these interviews before, I can see why you would think that’s all you really need to make it happen. That’s probably what I thought in the beginning. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the questions were just a part of a successful interview. Let me explain.
�
The mood and attitude of your interview subjects will very widely. I can count on one hand the number of subjects that were comfortable and excited about doing their interview when I first proposed the idea to them. That’s why our preparation for the interview begins weeks before we actually sit down in front of the camera. Something that I need to communicate very clearly is that we want to do this in a way that your loved ones will find it valuable for generations to come. So you can show up the day of the interview without any preparatory work, ask some questions and probably get a few good answers, but you won’t get the kind of keepsake you could have with just a little more effort.
�
After laying the groundwork with our subject, we hope we have them in a fairly receptive mood when we arrive. Now it’s time for us to start “ priming the pump”. From the time we walk in the door, we structure the sequence of our actions. Now we spend time looking at family pictures together with our subject. These aren’t just what ever pictures happen to be around. In our preparation work, we will have discussed what photos we want to look at when we arrive.
�
We also talk about setting up our gear in such a way as to minimize its impact on our subject. While people are now more used to seeing cameras at birthday parties and weddings, they aren’t used to sitting down in front of the camera, and heaven for bid if there are some lights shining on them as well. So once we have our gear setup, we take our seat beside or in front of the camera as the situation may be, and we have our subject sit down in their assigned place. We do not turn on the video camera, we do not turn on the lights. We slowly acclimate them as much as possible.
�
This is the point in time where we go through our pre-interview. While we don’t want our subject to give complete answers to our questions right now, this is the point where we briefly touch on each question we are going to ask them. For them, this finally eases their mind as to exactly what we are going to cover in the interview. Not knowing for sure what’s going to happen, coupled with the fact they don’t know anyone else who has done this, can create a lot of stress prior to the interview. For us, it’s time to make sure they are going to have an interesting answer to each of our questions. It’s also the time for us to find out if there is a question that may not work in the context of this particular interview. We will then make sure NOT to ask that question during the actual interview.
�
Once we get into this process, we now start to bring the lights up. For the bulk of the pre-interview, our subject will be getting used to sitting in front of the lights and in front of the camera. You know that little red light comes on when most cameras are recording? We set up our camera in a way so we don’t have a red light that comes on. The more we can do to make our subject relax in the beginning and to forget about the recording aspect, the better the experience will be for all of us.
�
The questions you ask, the number of questions, and even more importantly the sequence in which you ask the questions becomes crucial to your final success. Since subjects are typically nervous to begin with, we actually start out with questions not directly about them. We start out with a brief look at family genealogy. Only after they have gone through their life in loose chronological order for a while, will we start to get into more introspective questions.
�
The point of everything we have done up until now, is to put our subject in a position where they will not only be able to recall their stories, but will be a frame of mind where they want to share their beliefs, their feelings and their most important to life lessons.
�
We also talk about follow-up communications with our subject as well. We don’t want to leave them hanging after the interview. They want them to know what the next step is and more importantly, when can they see the finished video. It’s important to finish your project with the same quality of effort as you began. So creating a life history video worth having, takes considerably more than knowing what questions you want to ask your subject.
�
�