Production Log: Interview Preparation

Interview Preparation: Redefine your essential questions, target audience and desired response based on your research and follow-up. Then draw up specific goals for the interview you’ve decided to conduct and reflect on the following questions: How do you see this interview fitting into the documentary as a whole? What angle are you going to use to get what you want out of the interview? (What’s your plan of attack, so to speak?) Next, sketch out the questions—both baseline (contextualizing / informational) and complicating—that you need to accomplish your goals. Finally (and most importantly), rethink your approach. Try to anticipate some of the ways in which your interview might turn out differently than expected. What assumptions have you made in composing your questions ? (There’ll probably be a lot of them!)

The essential questions for my interview(s) are:
1. Who are you?
2. What social groups do you see at Punahou?
3. Which do you belong to?
4. Can we follow you?

This documentary is for Punahou students, and possibly a couple teachers to view. I would like people to come away from the documentary knowing that it’s okay to be different, and that everyone has a desire to be accepted by their peers. I hope that desire will help the social groups understand each other better.

My goals for the interview(s) is to:
1. Get the interviewee to talk about as many uncomfortable issues as possible without them feeling probed so that we can have more contrast in opinions.
2. Talk about the interviewee’s personal experiences with stereotypes and social groups in and about Punahou. Stereotypes really are personal issues and it is important, if not more interesting to hear about people’s inevitably different life experiences.
3. Just get them to talk as much about the issue as possible. The more feedback, the more material to work with.

I see this interview fitting into this documentary as another insight into an individual’s perspective on the topic – as another point of view and why that p.o.v. came to be the way it is.
I am going to first approach the interview with very general questions that won’t be insulting and gradually work towards more in depth questions. Because I am friends with the people I plan on interviewing, it shouldn’t be too hard to talk to them and get them to open up. I was thinking of going over the questions with them first to check if they are okay with answering all of the questions and to better prepare them for the interview.

Questions to accomplish goals:
1. What is your definition of stereotype?
2. Do you think having stereotypes is an advantage or disadvantage?
3. Do you feel accepted here? Is Punahou an accepting community? How does that change outside the Punahou group?
4. What are your thoughts about the stereotype/social group you think you belong to?
5. Do you have any memorable experiences having to do with stereotypes/social groups that you’d like to share?
6. If you went to a different school previous to Punahou, what were the stereotypes/social groups like there? How was it different from here?
7. If you went to a different school previous to Punahou, what was the general opinion of Punahou? Did that influence you for/against coming here?

In all of these questions I am making the assumption that the person is open with their opinions and that they really do have a lot to say about the issue. I am also hoping that they have interesting experiences to share on a documentary. It could be that they may not want to say much for fear of insulting someone or have experiences too personal to impart. Or perhaps they just don’t have strong feelings about stereotypes or social groups. I hope to solve this by asking some extra pre-interview questions.