Familiarity as a Downfall

My favorite interview of the day was with Nitzan Lebovic, because he was the least uncomfortable subject that we had in front of the camera. Ironically enough, we only were able to film this interview after being rather abruptly shut down by a first professor that we had asked to be the subject of the interview. I guess it just goes to show that sometimes you have to keep working to get the best videos possible, even if that means not letting an interview rejection get you down.




On the other hand, our interview with Wade Homer was highly awkward and seemed unprofessional because of the familiarity that he had with us. While finding an interview subject was easier because he walked by shortly after the tweet was sent out, I actually think that the interview was much less successful than other people who were both willing to interview and also not necessarily familiar with us. There's a lot implicit in this interview that isn't explained because I already know the background information about the subject; when I was attempting to conduct an interview, that didn't help because others wouldn't necessarily know those things or be able to infer them, but Homer didn't feel the need to bring them up.

Ultimately, I think that the project was (moderately) successful. Of course, it was interesting traveling around to find people who were interested in talking to us; by the same token, I almost wish we had received more rejections from students who weren't truly interested. I'd rather ask 5 people and get one really good interview than simply have the first person agree to interview and give a lackluster one. I think that was pretty well demonstrated by the two videos that I picked as my most and least favorites; the one that we had to persist in order to get the best video for was more rewarding than the one that we finished within two minutes of the tweet being sent out because of my knowing someone. I think, then, for the purposes f interviewing subjects, what I learned here might be that it's perhaps best to not interview someone that you know, because you're going to have a lot that can potentially be left unsaid and that the viewer won't be able to necessarily imply.