Today’s class we watched plenty of interview documentary. Robin mentioned that mostly student wants to do interview while given the project. Just like mine project, when the first time I told Robin I will doing a cats documentary this semester, he asked am I gonna interview their master? The answer is NO. The reason is it’s very boring to watch.  In my mind, a interview documentary like a story telling, when a man tell the story, then the next shot is a describe or a scene about the story. It’s kind of disappointed. After Robin showed us different filmmakers approaches in  interview, from the normal style then different style, my mind changed. I will say, interview documentary can be different!

After that we did a class exercise to shooting a interview documentary.
What worked:
I am the camera operator. I think our crew did a good job on that shooting. We did not get any issues on equipment and we set up all the equipments correctly.
What didn’t worked:
It’s not a professional practice, what I mean is the lighting, actors and equipment etc..
We are not professional actors, so it’s just a practice to explore different types of interview documentary.
We did not uses any professional lights which cause the characteristics of interviewee did not show out.
We did not get a good location, no plans, no pre-production.

We did four different types of interview shooting. The first one is the interviewee looks to the camera, the camera as the interview. Second is we shoot over the interview shoulder. Third is we got two interviewee sited opposite the interview, the interviewer sited opposite interviewee at middle of them.  Last one is used hand-held, interviewer and interviewee they are both in the frame , camera tracking them. I think those four types interview documentary brings lots to me, not only on the form of interview documentary but also how the director use different type of interview documentary form to delivery the message to audience, make them understand it and get its value.