Blog Post 40 - What Makes An Interview?

Interviews are another way to grow interest in a film. When you get people interested in your work, naturally they’ll continue to be curious and want to learn more. Interviews are all about asking questions, so it’s a great way to spread information about the topic. For these reasons, I’d like to create one or two mini interviews on people in my team for my Instagram. So, let's do some research!

Interviews often consist of two or more people. In the most simplest case, there will be an interviewer, who presents the questions, and an interviewee who answers them. For film, the interviewer is often an fan or journalist of some kind, gathering the information in order to share it with the rest of the world, while the interviewee is someone that worked on the creation of the film


Actor interviews are one of the most common and used interview when it comes to film. After all, a main character is often the face of the media. People will become curious about why they decided to play the role, their experience on set, their techniques that make them a great actor, and more. Another common interviewee is the director of the film. Since the director is the main person in charge of the film, and may be the creator of the story if it wasn’t sourced from somewhere else, the audience often comes with lots of questions for them. Common questions are about what inspired the creation of the movie, why certain stylistic choices were made, how actors were chosen, what the dominant reading of the film is supposed to be, etc.


So how are interviews recorded? Even if its just a person answering questions, visually, the interview still needs to be interesting. Rather than settle for a static shot of the interviewee answering question after question, the cameraman will often utilize many different shots to create an attention grabbing visual. A common technique I often found was having varying levels on how close the camera is to the subject. Answers that show more emotion can use close up shots on the face to emphasis that reaction, while ones where the interviewee uses more body language can use full shots to showcase that movement.




In editing, there also often features visuals to what the subject is talking about. For example, in this interview with Dove Cameron, where she talks about her past works, her voice is used as a voice over while visually we see exactly what production she’s talking about, in this specific case, her time on Hairspray Live. Once again, this keeps the audience entertained visually, but also provides context for her words.



New information means new planning!

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