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- With documentaries, your time spent preparing

and getting to know your subject will likely

far outweigh the time you're actually conducting interviews.

Ensuring their comfort with you and the environment

they're in is what will allow them to feel

they can open up to you on camera.

There are different opinions out there

on whether or not you should conduct

pre-interviews ahead of time with your documentary subjects.

I actually think that you should conduct them ahead of time

to give them some idea of what they're going to be asked.

Don't necessarily be afraid of losing spontaneity.

You can always save a couple of questions

that they haven't heard before

for the end of your interview.

Just like you want to do with your actors,

you want to get to know your subjects

before you interview them and engage them

during your setup.

Keep them aware of the process

and what's going on around them

just like you do any other non actor.

And always make sure they're physically comfortable

and sitting or standing in a comfortable space

that they're used to.

A lot of times you're on set with these people

in their homes or where they work,

so just make sure it's a comfortable space for them.

Here's a clip of an interview I did

for a documentary recently where the subject wasn't

very comfortable as we got started.

But when we were able to warm him up,

make him comfortable with the interview itself

and with us, his performance improved greatly.

- So I think part of what I've been asked is

how literally should the art be interpreted for game play,

and I think myself as an artist, I always felt...

So I like for the art to be open for interpretation.

I had a train of thought and I lost it.

My apologies.

- [Man] We can always circle back like I said.

- These are hard questions (laughs).

- [Man] Keep in mind there are no right answers.

- Okay.

- [Man] And no wrong answers.

They're just your thoughts on this.

- Sure, yeah.

- [Man] It's totally cool.

- And even with paintings when you look

at the Pre-Raphaelites, the Waterhouse,

when you see those paintings you know

you see a beautiful woman floating in the water

and you go, "Oh, she's so lovely."

And then you realize she's dead.

And it instantly creates a story, you're interested.

It's like why is she dead?

What is going on here?

And if you look at my work, you'll see that it's not

just skulls and scary things.

There's usually a mixture of that darkness

and the beauty and I think it's the contrast of that

that I'm drawn to.

It's inherent drama and it creates a story

and it makes people curious at what's going on.

- When you're conducting a documentary interview,

you want to make them direct their responses to you,

not the camera if possible.

You want to make it a conversation.

It needs to be easy and it needs to flow.

Remember you're helping someone tell a story

just like you were having a conversation with a friend.

If something isn't working, you can always circle back

and rephrase the question if necessary.

Just put it on your list for something to go back to later.

And one thing you could try is to always keep

the camera rolling even after the interview is over.

You never know what you're going to get

when they think the camera is turned off

because they're more comfortable with you

and not so concerned about being on camera.

And afterward you can always show them

that great take that you would have missed

had you not kept the cameras rolling.

For more tips on working with documentary subjects,

be sure to watch Ashley Kennedy's great course,

Learning Documentary Video Two Production.