Generic Types of Interview-Based Features (Examples)

Confessional Interview - here is all-time humdinger (still record audience for factual programme): part one; part two; part three; part four. Imagine you had done this interview (not for TV). Practice by 'writing this up' - in true Sun/Bella style as Diana opens up her heart... Compare with this recent example of a FEATURE INTERVIEW (Gonzo style interview - reporter/interviewer is star, it is all about what Ross is saying, not Cameron - the stories the next day were all about what Ross said.) Of course journalists (and student journalists) love the idea of doing feature interviews - here's another (in print) - Lynn Barber. The ultimate thing would be Lynn Barber interviews Jonathan Ross - imagine that! - or Divinia What'sherface interviews Michael Parkinson - that'll never happen! (Actually I claim IP rights over that - pitch a new TV series - call it Interviewers Interview Interviewers About Interviewing and Stuff - it's a winner. It would be well wiggy for for the viewers to work out who was interviewing who. Maybe they could vote for who they thought was winning. But I digress.

Sometimes students try to reproduce a TV or radio style 'chat show' interview by using a Q and A format for a magazine article. That is just total crap. It just looks very amatuerish (the writer is using TV style in print, which doesn't work). Here's an example - its an intreview with a journalist (confusing I know, but I want to hit two birds with one stone). Its sad because the subject matter is potentially excellent (the interview subject is sometimes called the greatest living journalist). This "Q and A" is very weak and the thing would have been a lot stronger if it had been done as a proper confessional (by 'writing it up' as "my life story...") or if it had been done as a feature interview (complete with gonzo type observations about the interview subject. What this is really is a total cop out - they should have just commissioned Ryzard to write the piece in his own voice. A big shame they didn't.

Both the feature interview and the confessional interview have to be differentiated from the classic PROFILE - or 'living obituary' - which are more the province of the trade press, and the broadsheet. Some profiles: Hugo Chavez, Tim Berners Lee, David Frost, Aki Kaurismaki, Jonathan Ross. The key to features getting a total grip on the formats. Readers/ viewers/ listeners "consume the formats" - not especially the content. Remember: The medium is the massage. Get those formats nice and crisp - don't mix them up, or you'll end up with typical amatuer student journalism sludge.

OK it is trumped for ratings success and commerical value by Panorama Princess of Hearts. But the most effective confessional interview I've ever seen on film is Shoah (It contains answers to single questions which, with gentle prompting, last up to an hour each). The method comes from the clinical practice of psychotherapy.

Interview technique - in confessionals that's mainly a matter of GET THEM TALKING - KEEP THEM TALKING (not like TV style chatshow/ Paxman interviewing. That's a different game). For profiles you don't even interview the subject. You interview people who know them.

OK it is trumped for ratings success and commerical value by Panorama Princess of Hearts. But the most effective confessional interview I've ever seen on film is Shoah (It contains answers to single questions which, with gentle prompting, last up to an hour each). The interview subject is actually given time to think and take his time to remember and answer. Its a kind of exact opposite of the Jonathan Ross approach - and TV/Radio generally - where interviews are mainly a contest of wites between reporter/presenter and subject (eg Paxman) and an entertaining gladitorial contest. All very good. But a different approach. Shoah of course works against the grain of the visual medium in so far as it is not superficial. It take almost ten hours to tell the story. It uses the visual medium to achieve emotional engagement, in the style of a oil painting. It is calm, slow, cold, unsensational, humane, unconstructed, honest, unmanipulated, adult, painful significant... .