How to Film a Documentary Interview

Interviewing a documentary subject can be challenging enough. Thinking about technical or editing opportunities while filmmaking can kill the creative spirit of the shoot. However, the technical elements of filming an interview are incredibly important if you want to create a high production look to your documentary.

We’ll publish another blog post about how to light a documentary interview, but this blog post will tackle the subject of properly capturing enough “cutaway shots” for editing purposes.

In documentaries jump cuts are even more important to try and avoid. Jump cuts are jarring transitions where the subject seems to move through the air or abruptly change position. Imaging for example that you were being interviewed and then you said something boring, then changed your position and then continued the interview. The editor of the documentary would edit out the boring part and piece to the two usable snippets of footage together, but your change in position (no matter how slightly) would cause what is referred to as a jump cut.

Let’s imagine for example, that you’re interviewing a subject in their apartment and they are exposing great ideas in their dialogue but then for 30 seconds they “hum” and “um” and stumble over the words, you’ll likely want to cut that out. However, when you cut out 30 seconds of footage the two good pieces of interview won’t visually fit together perfectly. You’ll notice a slight change in your subject’s body position. This will lead to a jarring transition and will lower the perceived production value of your documentary.

To solve this problem you can use cutaways. These are shots that are related in some way to your subject’s story or of your subject themselves. For instance, let’s say you need to cut out 30 seconds of footage from an interviewee who is discussing homelessness in his or her city. Staring at your edit point you could insert cutaway footage of homeless people engaging in the activities that the interviewee is discussing during the next clip. This way you are just using the usable audio but when you transfer back into the interview the subject will not appear to have jumped to a new position. It will look harmonious and continuous.

The second option is to use cutaway footage of either the subject’s body language or reaction footage of the interviewer listening. By inserting this footage at the start of an edit point you can create the illusion of continuity without the jarring visual effects.

You could also use footage that either compliments or contradicts what the subject is saying. For example, if they are telling you a story of how modest they live but their home tells another story, you might decide to capture some “b-roll” footage of the interior of their house. You can use these as cutaway shots to merge the 2 shots that and sew the footage back together.

Another idea is to remember to gather some reactionary footage of the listener. This is the easiest footage to get yet some of the most forgotten footage to capture. You’ll thank yourself in the editing room if you have the option of using any of these types of cutaway shots.

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