8. Manipulate Responsibly

It’s tempting for a filmmaker to twist every word, every scene, in support of a conclusion.

“Everything is manipulation,” said Burns. “Storytelling is the artificial distillation of experience. A fadeout—that’s manipulating time and putting in dramatic structure. The selection, out of an interview that might have lasted three hours, down to a couple of salient clips within a film, might be central to that film yet represent only a fraction of what that person said—which was of itself a kind of unnatural, out-of-existence thing. That’s what an interview is; it’s all manipulation.”

Shame on you, however, if you consciously take anything out of context to score a few easy points.

“I sleep very, very well at night knowing I’ve never manipulated the truth in any of my movies,” said Timoner.

Annie Clark, a survivor of on-campus sexual assault, whom Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering interviewed for The Hunting Ground. Courtesy of RADiUS-TWC and CNN Films

9. Set Yourself Creative Constraints

In recent years a documentarian’s pursuit of truth has seemingly been enhanced by advances in digital technology. Whereas Burns and Morris tediously shot much of their legendary work on film, they and everyone else can now deploy the apparent luxury of the hand-held camera and terabyte memory card.

“I used to call myself the 11-minute psychiatrist, because every 11 minutes you’d have to change magazines, reload and re-slate,” said Morris.

To Burns, who still shoots some projects on film, the digital age runs the risk of diminishing an art form.

“I miss the old discipline of the 11-plus minutes of a 400-foot magazine of 16mm film,” he said. “If you take listening, improvisation, and urgency, you begin to understand the fundamental elements of how you should approach interviewing. I know people who go in and record the equivalent of 25 rolls of film and wonder at the end why there’s nothing there. The fact is, it cost a lot of money to buy a roll of 16mm, and process it, and continue, and there was no possibility of being lazy. We had to actively be a part of whether the interview was going to be good or bad.”

10. It’s On You

In the end, whether your interview is conceived as one of Barak’s long, leisurely lunches, or a Timoner on-location camp down, the art of the interview probably comes down to equal dashes of luck and magic, with a big bag of intangibles thrown in the pot.

“There is no ‘Errol Morris’s Secret Sauce of Perfect Interviewing,’” said the master. “It’s justifiably considered a talent. Part investigator, part psychiatrist; part good listener, in part many, many things.”

No matter what, when the interviewee walks away, it’s on you.

“I’ve never blamed an interview subject [for a bad interview],” said Burns. “I’ve always said, ‘Well, it wasn’t a good day today,’ or, ‘I didn’t ask the right questions.’ It’s a part of my discipline.

“Though, in an abstract way, I think to myself, ‘I’m good at this.’ The first interview I did was 44 years ago, so this has been a lifetime occupation, but I still feel like a student. I still wake up on the morning of an interview with butterflies in my stomach. And I’m glad that’s the case—that it still has the urgency. Not just for what the project thinks it needs, but for my understanding of how fragile the dynamic is within an interview. It can go so many different ways.”

The Interrotron at 25

A part-time private detective by trade, Errol Morris always felt that truth was fastest gained face to face. To let any interviewee get away with looking away, he reasoned, was letting them off the hook.

Enter the Interrotron, Morris’ signature secret interviewing weapon over the past quarter-century. With two cameras and two two-way mirrors—one of each aimed at the interviewee, the other aimed at the director—the result is a piercing interrogation where every blink, blush and bead of sweat is captured.

“In most situations, the camera is in a different place than the interviewer,” said Morris. “Where is the eyeline supposed to go? I’ve always been fascinated with preserving eye contact. I constructed the device so they’re looking right into the camera and also always looking at me at the same time.”

First described publicly by author Philip Gourevitch in a New York Times Magazine article in 1992, the Interrotron is now fairly standard rental shop fare for videographers worldwide, but no one uses it more powerfully and provocatively in films than the inventor himself.

“I don’t know if it made me a better or worse interviewer,” said the 2003 Oscar winner for The Fog of War. “But there was something different for the viewing audience. That I know. I think it really helps the audience determine who’s lying, or not.” MM

This article originally appeared in MovieMakers Spring 2015 issue. Featured image photograph by Nubar Alexanian

 

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