Getting the best out of interviewing people
 
Definition ; Interview, a meeting of people face to face , for the purpose of formal conference on some point.

COMPILATION

the South African view on Minimum Force.
Vox Populi.
Helen Muspratt, photographer.
Bill Brandt, photographer.
Edward Bawden, artist.
The Fishing Party, the securities broker.

What is the perceived relationship between the person who asks the questions and the person questioned ?

What are the reactions to the questions ?

Have they discussed the event ?

How does the initial structure of the film set the scene for the confrontation ?

Is the interviewee being honest ?

Is the interviewee being dull ?

What is the danger of a particular direction of questioning ?

Comment on
 
lighting,
the background ,
angle of vision,
when the editor cuts away,
when/why the director cuts to rostrum photography,
the framing of the questions
what image of the interviewer is presented
how silence is used, is it always a signal of failure ?

BOOKLIST

 
Paul Hill and Thomas Cooper, Dialogue with Photography , Thames & Hudson 1979, interviews with the following photographers, Paul Strand, Man Ray, Cecil Beaton, Lartigue, Brassai, Kertesz, George Rodger, Cartier Bresson, Doisneau, Herbert Bayer, Henry Holmes Smith,, Helmut Gernsheim, Brett Weston, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Eliot Porter, Gene Smith, Laura Gilpin, Imogen Cunningham, Wynne Bullock, Minor White, Beaumont Newhall.
 
Beaumont Newhall (editor) Essays and Images , Secker and Warburg, London, 1981 (MOMA NY 1980), see p.271, ff., Photojournalism in the 1920's, A Conversation between Felix H.Man, Photographer and Stefan Lorant, Picture Editor.
 
Hitchcock by Truffaut, Paladin London 1986; interviews with the film director Alfred Hitchcock.
 
Georgakas and Rubenstein, Art Politics Cinema, The Cineaste Interviews, Pluto London 1985. Interviews with Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Wajda, Pontecorvo, Satyajit Ray.
 
Stanley Casson, Artists at Work , Harrap London 1933, with sculptor Frank Dobson, printmaker Henry Rushbery.
 
E.Roditi, Dialogues on Art, Secker & Warburg London 1960, Chagall, Miro, Paolozzi etc.
 
Ziegler and Bigsby, The Radical Imagination and the Liberal Tradition ,Interviews with Novelists, John Barth, John Hawkes, Malcolm Bradbury etc.
 
Eric Bentley (ed) Thirty Years of Treason, Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968, Thames and Hudson London, 1971. Investigative cross-examination.
 
Generally see Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty, The War Correspondent as Hero, Propaganda and Mythmaker, Quartet London 1982.