Tips for documentary interviews
By: Claudia Stack
Tags: Life, Age Of Awareness, BlackLivesMatter, Film, History

First, find the natural historians

Claudia Stack interviews Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk in 2012

Adapted from the book Rosenwald School Reflections: Documentation & Preservation by Claudia Stack

When tackling a documentary project, I encourage you to expand your scope beyond “expert voices” (such as Ph.D.s in the field) to find the ordinary people who lived the history you are documenting. In every group or extended family, there seems to be at least one natural historian. By this, I mean at least one person who has a wonderful memory for details, and who cares a great deal about preserving the history of the group. These are the people you need to find, and they will usually help you make other connections. Often, this person is a good storyteller, and may have saved documents and pictures for many years.

This was the case with Carrie Mae Sharpless Newkirk (1923–2013), who I was fortunate to meet when documenting historic African American schools in North Carolina. She was a lady of great integrity, and she had a sharp memory and a quick wit. She had also saved materials beginning with her own school days at the historic Chinquapin Rosenwald school in Duplin County, NC.

If there is a retirement home in your area you could contact the director to ask whether there are residents who might enjoy talking about their life experiences. I filmed one interview in a retirement home. Be careful that the person is able to understand what you are doing, and explain the project to the interviewee AND his/her family. Of course, always obtain written permission from the subject.

When you sit down with interviewees, taping or filming the interview will allow you to focus on the person, not on taking notes. If you are filming, position the interviewee to face you and put the camera to one side of you to do the filming from a three quarter angle. This will put the person more at ease, and the footage will be more natural than if the s/he is staring straight into the camera.

People often ask me for suggestions about interview questions. The most important thing to remember is NOT to make comments, and not to try to share your own experiences during the interview. Injecting a lot of your own experiences into an oral history interview will just distract your subject. It may even make him/her anxious if you are seeking agreement or empathy.

I think this is particularly important to be a good listener when touching on sensitive issues such as race or economic background, especially if your own background is quite different from that of the interviewee. As a white person who was raised in integrated public schools in New York City, I had little in common with my elderly African American neighbors. That just meant I had a lot to learn! Over time, I became better at asking open-ended questions, and at coaxing more detailed responses from people.

Here are some general tips for oral history interviews:

• Make sure to obtain formal, written permission to interview someone. Without a signed release interviews cannot be used in many ways, and archives may not even want to accept interviews without releases. Search for a simple release form online and have interviewees assign the rights to you. Then you in turn can transfer some or all the rights to an archive at the appropriate time.

• Ask open-ended questions, not ones that can be answered in a word or two.

• Redirect when necessary with neutral, short questions such as “How did that make you feel?”, “What do you suppose your (teacher/parent/friend/etc) was thinking?”, “What else do you remember about…..?”)

• Practice being comfortable with silence; allow your subjects time to formulate their thoughts.

• You can often evoke more detail by using this device: “Tell me a story about…. (your early years in school, your favorite subject, your parents, etc.)”

• Make sure your interviewee is comfortable, offer breaks every 20–30 minutes, make sure s/he has a beverage.

• If circumstances allow, transport him/her to the site of important memories, such as the old school, barns/farm fields, house of worship, etc. You may not want to do your whole interview there, but it will evoke memories.

• Show him/her vintage pictures from his/her life, ask him/her to describe the place or people.

• Don’t be afraid of digressions, they may lead to the most interesting and valuable stories. However, one time when I do try to get interview subjects to refocus is when they give extended comments on what they feel is wrong with society today. Those comments are interesting, but they don’t entirely capture the depth of their youthful experiences, because they are often framed in a negative way, such as, “Kids in school today don’t know how to listen as well as we did…” A response to this might be, “Please give me an example of a time that showed your class listened well in school.”

It takes time to build trust, but trust is essential to good interviews. I interviewed some of my subjects a dozen times over the years. Beyond the matter of research you will probably find, as I have, that your life is immeasurably enriched by getting to know Rosenwald school alumni. I see them several times per month when I attend meetings or just drop by the homes of my older friends. My husband and I have chickens and a garden, so sometimes I bring eggs and produce. My older friends thank me, but truly, I am the one who is blessed in knowing them!