Conducting interviews and conducting an orchestra

Larry and Bill discuss conducting.

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Bill: I think interview film directors can learn something from Hollywood.

Larry: Hollywood?

Bill: Interviews are pretty boring if they are talking heads. Smart editing, archive footage, text inserted, this all helps move the story along.

Larry: It’s not always about stories.

Bill: Well, you as an interviewer, and the conductor of an orchestra, you’re both trying to control unruly sounds.

Larry: Right.

Bill: So I’m just saying, sometimes you have to control what happens at the beginning, and in the middle, and how it all finishes.

Larry: Right again. Know what you mean. Garrot the garrulous.

Bill: What do you do when someone grabs the mike and won’t let go? And they keep saying, “Oh and one more thing.”

Larry: Conductors have their baton. An interviewer has that cut dead question ready.

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Then and now (2)

The interviewer moves on from history to design, views and extensions.

Interviewer: Was this a deliberate get-back-nature approach to holidays?

GKN: I thought it good for the family to experience a simple life, a taste of pioneering that early settlers must have faced, if you will. And the lack of any services like electricity drove the project in this direction and didn’t offer any temptations. There was no other choice.

Interviewer: (still shot #2, 3 of GKN cabin) The design has a simple clear profile. It seems to be well-sited, overlooking the water.

GKN: (shot of back timber wall) The back wall, facing south, the cold side is a timber wall, no windows. (shot of glass front and side doors) The west and north sides were sliding glass doors to catch the sun. The morning sun was late to strike (zoom shot of view past jetty down lake towards Mourea) but the view down the lake of the sunsets has been great. Sitting four to five feet up, perched on concrete piles, gave a view of the hot water beach on the peninsula and also allowed boat storage under the house.

Interviewer: (Shot of interviewer) The views are impressive. Can you tell us something about them?

GKN: (insert footage including narration shot 071228 on lake shore panning from Hot Beach to Ohau Channel, past islands, to kayaker entering Hot Stream).

Interviewer: (Shot of interviewer indicating extension) But this one room cabin didn’t stay this way. It has grown.

GKN: (Shot of GKN explaining the first extension.) Needs changed. As the family grew, more rooms were required, so in 1976 the 1^st extension was added. (brief still shot of first extension) This involved the verandah being closed in to become a bedroom, the extension included a bathroom and boatshed being put on the end.

Interviewer: (shot of interviewer) I imagine many people have visited over the years.

GKN: (Shot of GKN in front of cabin) That was the main reason for building it. I saw it as a social place where people could drop by and talk, stay and relax. A whole swag of families stopped by over Christmas and New Year. (still shot of N’s, F’s, & S-Ss) For example, one year, the Fenwicks moored at the jetty and slept on board their launch, the Daph-Ann, and the Somerset-Smiths camped in tents on the lawn. So that was three couples and ten children having a communal holiday. You might say that was a common pattern in New Zealand holidays in the 1960s.

Interviewer: (Shot of interviewer) But it has been extended even more?

GKN: (Shot of GKN in gallery/conservatory) Too right it has. There was the addition in 19— of the main bedroom, the closing in of the deck to make a gallery/sunroom/conservatory, effectively creating sleeping areas for around a dozen people.

Interviewer: (shot looking down lake across jetty) And what have been the most recent developments?

GKN: About 2001, we extended the jetty, it’s a jetty shared with the neighbor, (Shot of GKN standing next door in boat launching area) there haven been easements added to the title so that a sharing of facilities with the property next door, particularly for boat launching, are preserved. (Shot of GKN showing handrail) And most recently there have been small additions like the installation of handrails up steps to assist entry and exit for more elderly guests.

Inauspicious

Gordon D.G. has applied for a job with a law firm. A senior parter, Simpson G, calls GDG in for a quick preliminary interview.

Simpson: Thanks for coming in. Can I get you something? A coffee perhaps?

GDG: Pellegrini, thanks, con gaz.

Simpson. We’re out of gas. Sorry. Plain?

GDG: Plain’s great.

Simpson: Now, I know you're a busy man, and your credentials speak for themselves. But could we just ask some background questions?

GDG: Sure.

Simpson: What is your main reason for applying to work in Homerville?

GDG: My wife got a job here at a local 7-11 so I thought I'd relocate.

Simpson: Ah, hmm, good. Just a couple of things from your c.v. You were an adviser to the Saudi Arabian Taxation Committee from 1995 to 2001. What changes did you initiate in that role?

GDG: Er, well. In a word, none, actually. There isn't any tax in Saudi Arabia. To speak of. Only the zakat.

Simpson: OK. Any hobbies?

GDG: Hmm. Potted geraniums is my big thing at the moment.

Simpson: Thanks, Gordon. That's about all for today. We'll be in touch.
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Aphorisms vs soundbites

Scene 74 of a movie called Papyrus: My Favorite Font. This documentary movie explores diversions, loose threads, stray ends of language. In this scene, the interviewer, Evan, a professor near the end of his career and tenure, seeks to resurrect his position by interviewing famous but fading movie stars. His focus, could we exaggerate a little and suggest fixation, is on those stars who have had the smarts enough in their career to throw out regular provocative aphorisms, aka in present parlance soundbites. Some will of course jump up startled and protest that aphorisms and soundbites are worlds away. Evan has an appointment with Ethan who played in a number of action movies.

Evan: Names are symbols.

Ethan: Yes, there are the names we identify people with. My name for example, it means strong. But that was before.

Evan: And for me, my name is Evan, it means young fighter, but I am neither any longer.

Ethan: These conditions pass.

Evan: Scripts you have read, I guess they often contained hidden symbols.

Ethan: All the time. Symbols, signs, slogans. I was in a film once, and the writer kept changing the numbers every day. He’d come in and scribble out “Hits him twice” and write three for example. And I’d ask what does it matter, and he’d say, “These things count. It affects the outcome.”

Evan: Beyond numbers, the lines you had to memorize, does any writer stand out in your mind as especially brilliant?

Ethan: Sure. Woodrow.

Evan: He gave us ideas like “Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.”?

Ethan: And “Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”

Evan: Why are so many of these stars so clever with aphorisms about money? Like you know… “A man has one hundred dollars and you leave him with two dollars, that's subtraction.”

Ethan: Aah, Mae. Not just a pretty face. She had her head screwed on right.

Q&A books

Author: I picked up three new books yesterday. One was about starting a business, one was about documentary film-making, and the other was about yoga. You know what they had in common?

Artist:They’d all been reviewed on Oprah?

Author: No, none of them were in the league of big sales. They were how-to books but all pretty good in terms of content, breadth of view and so on.

Artist:Written by a team of writers, not a single author?

Author: Close. No, each book had one writer. Funny you should mention Oprah because each author had gone around interviewing experts in the field they were writing about. Entrepreneurs, screen writers, yoga teachers.

Artist: And those experts were willing to spill the beans on their secrets?

Author: You know how it is. An interview is free publicity and people at the top of their field like to talk and once they start talking they generally tell stories and so it all comes out.

Artist:So interviewing is becoming a new genre?

Author: A new style of informative writing maybe. Extended Q&A. Elements of less formal writing creeping in maybe. Length of books increasing, these ones each ran 400 to 500 hundred pages. And were produced quickly, generally over the course of one year.

Artist: Pretty hard to crank out that many pages in that time without a little help. Sounds good. You get others to tell you what to write and you bootstrap yourself to instant wisdom.

Author: You just have to do the initial persuading, know the field and know what question will unlock the speaker.

Artist: And remember to turn the tape recorder on.
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Proustian interview declined

We can do this interview straight or we can take a Proustian approach.

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by straight. When someone says something is straight and to the point it usually ends up crooked as a dog’s hind leg. And what’s this Proust thing?

A game, a diversion. A series of questions young people asked each other at parties in the late 1800s, when Proust was young. They interviewed each other about their likes, favorites, heroes, and their dislikes, defects and faults. A profile of the interviewee emerged.

Sounds challenging and overly-revealing. What sort of questions are straight ones?

The usual. What do you think of this, how do you like that, why do you think the other. You know.

Sounds less work, less scary even.

But the interviewer has to work harder to get at the nitty-gritty.

Good. Stop moaning. Let’s leave Proust for another day.

Pity about that.

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