Paul has finally managed to secure a time with Steve Lambarth (a Sheffield Weds fan) so that we can go and interview him his thoughts on Tango.
We were also hoping to get an interview with Harry Gration and I think maybe a Sheffield Wednesday official/steward but I think Paul has had difficulty contacting them and I think it is too late now as we only have just over a week left and still not much of the edit has been done anyway so we don't want to add too much more footage into the mix.
I met Paul and Jacob outside uni as they went to collect the equipment and I was driving as Steve lived just outside of Sheffield. Steve was just a Sheffield Wednesday fan and knew of Tango but they weren't really friends so I was wondering what we would get out of the interview. When we got there though and he started answering the questions he made some interesting points about Tango and the situation and was quite a good talker, not just saying one word answers. We had a few attempts at the set up as the first place they suggested I didn't like because it had a flowery wallpaper as a background and it just didn't look good through the lens. They then suggested that he sat down at the dining room table but I still thought this seemed a bit too contrived and I wanted him to look more natural plus there was a big window in the background that was overexposed as it was a bright day. I then suggested the kitchen so he could stand up rather than be sitting down.
There was also light coming in through the window to the side so I thought it would look good lighting up his face. As we did the interview though Paul was stood on the other side, as there wasn't a lot of room in the kitchen, so his face was facing away from the light and was quite shaded so didn't look as good. Also we wanted him facing just off the camera rather than directly into it but when we watched the footage back he was facing too much the other way so you could only see one side of his face most of the time. I didn't realise this at the time due to where I was standing and I was also operating the Marantz so was concentrating on that. I think Jacob should have maybe stopped the interview and alerted us to this, so that we could have stood Paul closer to the camera, as he would have been looking through the lens and been able to see this.
When reviewing the footage for this interview our editor said he was quite happy because he could use this interview as a driving force behind the documentary as if covered a lot of points. As we were going to have the documentary split into sections - Intro to Tango, Intro to the other interviewees and how they know him, stories about Tango, negative things on Tango, and then a more positive conclusion at the end, the editor said that this interview would be able to lead into each section/topic because Steve talked about knowing Tango, stories about Tango and addressed the negative aspect also.
Interview Techniques
I think we have all learnt a lot over this project with regards to interviewing because we have made some mistakes with how and where we have placed the interviewee, where we have placed the camera and at what height etc and also the lighting set up or use of natural light.
We have learnt that it is good to interview the person standing up as they tend to talk and look better - this is why I wanted steve to stand in our last interview.
We've also learnt to consider the backdrop because our first interview didn't have a good background so I've always tried to look at what's in the background and how it's framing look through the camera. Although we all know about lighting we've always struggled to make it work for us and still have a lot to learn in setting up our own lighting and also using natural light to our advantage because some of interviewees either had too much light in their faces or not enough and this can make a difference to how they come across as well as how it looks visually on camera.
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