8 Tips for Telling Beautiful Photofilms

Here’s a list of very, very good tips for telling beautiful multimedia stories, posted by the Knight Digital Media Center.

There is of course no magic recipe, but if you’re going to be interviewing people this is probably the most important point to remember:

‘Empathize, don’t sympathize, with your characters.‘

I’d go even further. Empathy isn’t that useful to the role of interviewing either. If you understand someone, there is very little for them to tell you. I start from the point that I don’t really understand the people I am talking to and I probably never will, but that I can learn something from their experience.

I’m going to write more about this soon but in my opinion the fastest way to sink an interview is to become overly emotional. Recently I took in a question and answer session with the great film-maker and documentarian Werner Herzog. He was talking about his latest film which looks at capital punishment in America. Asked if he got emotional during the interviews he swiftly replied that during an interview you’re too busy focusing on drawing out all the stuff you need in the short time you have to really take in what is being said.

This mirrors my own experience. It’s only afterwards it sinks in. If at all.