I was extremely nervous going into my interview. I had tested all the equipment, made sure it worked and had all my questions written out and ready. Coming into a FAMS class with little experience with professional filming was a little nerve wrecking and having to film alone was scary. I think the workshop we did last monday really helped, because I had the opportunity to interview my subject the Thursday after that class.
I knew my subject well but still was concerned with messing up the interview. In the end, I arrived to the shelter, shot b roll of the dogs and cats and was able to get my interview in front of the lake at the shelter, which led to a beautiful backdrop. What I was most concerned about was messing up the audio, which ended up having no problem. In the end, my issue was the lighting. The interviewee insisted on doing the interview on this picnic table but it ended up casting a dark shadow over her. It wasn’t the worst, but I had to try to lighten the frames during editing. I kind of noticed the darkness on the camera screen but thought it was just my angle. I thought about interrupting the interview to fix the lighting but I thought it would be too disruptive. My subject was an extremely busy woman, who was taking her time to talk to me and it felt wrong to move the entire interview. Would it have been appropriate to interrupt the interview to fix lighting? I was unsure about the ethics and polite-ness of stopping an interview.
The same thing happened to me going into my interview. I was so extremely nervous because I had never interviewed, let alone filmed an interview, of anyone before. I was incredibly intimidated by the audio kit I was given at Muhlenberg. The opportunity for something to go wrong was high because I had never used that particular audio kit before, there were a lot of wires, buttons, and doohickeys I was confident in controlling. I didn’t sleep at all the night before my interview! This was also probably in part due to the fact that I was interviewing a documentarian who would know I have no idea what I am doing. She made it really easy though. I was using a different camera than I had used in the past, and being unsure about everything to begin with, the interview started off uneasy as expected. However I think my inability and noobness was something she found endearing. I hope anyway! As for your question about changing locations for the interview, I would probably have done what you did and stuck it out in the crappy light situation because I wouldn’t want to uproot and make the subject uncomfortable and also throw myself off track once things finally got rolling. However I do think it is 100% acceptable to let the interviewee know that you need to change locations. If the subject isn’t a completely inconsiderate person, he or she will probably realize that light is important for film and would make adjustments accordingly. A quick apology should do the trick as long as you’ve already scoped out another place that should work better. Confidence is key! Something I’m still working on…