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Chapter 19 — Further Reading
The interview sits at the intersection of directing, lighting, sound, and editing, so the best resources for it come from several corners of the craft. Below are foundational books, free online learning, films to study, and tools — each annotated with what it gives you and which learning path it serves. Everything here is a real, verifiable source; where a specific edition, page, or detail is beyond what we can confirm, we describe the work rather than invent specifics.
Suggested order: if you read one thing, make it Rabiger's Directing the Documentary (the interview chapters). Then study The Fog of War with this chapter's Case Study 1 beside you. Then pick up whichever of the audio or lighting resources matches your weakest pillar from the Exercise 30 self-audit.
Foundational books
Directing the Documentary — Michael Rabiger. The standard textbook on documentary filmmaking, and the single most useful book for this chapter. Its treatment of interviewing — building trust, phrasing questions, listening, the ethics of filming real people — is thorough and practical, and it connects the interview to the whole documentary process. Serves: all paths, especially 🎓 Student and 💼 Pro-track.
Documentary Storytelling — Sheila Curran Bernard. A clear, craft-focused book on shaping true material into story. Strong on how interview soundbites become structure — directly relevant to why §19.5's "full-sentence answer" matters and how Chapter 30 will use it. Serves: 🎥 Creator, 🎓 Student.
The Filmmaker's Handbook — Steven Ascher & Edward Pincus. The book this whole series treats as a touchstone: a comprehensive, technically reliable reference covering cameras, lenses, lighting, and sound recording. Use it to go deeper on the Part III skills this chapter applies — mic types, levels, and interview lighting. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎓 Student.
In the Blink of an Eye — Walter Murch. A short, profound book on why cuts work, by one of the great picture and sound editors. It is not about interviews specifically, but it will change how you think about the moment you cut into and out of an answer — the clean air, the pause, the emotional cut. Read it before Chapter 29. Serves: all paths.
Cinematography: Theory and Practice — Blain Brown. A rigorous, well-illustrated reference on lighting and camera. Its lighting sections deepen §19.2 — motivated light, ratios, and shaping a face — beyond what a synthesis chapter can cover. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎥 Creator.
Light Science and Magic — Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, Paul Fuqua & Robin Reid. Written for photographers but invaluable for anyone lighting a face. Its clear model of how light behaves — and how to light reflective and human subjects — makes you better at the interview key. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎓 Student.
Introduction to Documentary — Bill Nichols. The standard scholarly primer on documentary — its modes (observational, participatory, expository, and more), its ethics, and its claims on truth. It gives you the vocabulary to think about what kind of documentary your interview belongs to, and why the eyeline and narration choices of §19.1–19.6 carry meaning. Serves: 🎓 Student.
On oral history and the art of listening — Studs Terkel. Terkel's oral-history collections (such as Working and Hard Times) are masterclasses in what a great interviewer can draw out of ordinary people. Read them not for technique but for ear — for how curiosity and genuine listening produce extraordinary talk. If you want the modern audio equivalent, the This American Life approach to interview and story (Ira Glass has spoken and written widely about it) is a superb, accessible model of building narrative from recorded talk. Serves: 🎥 Creator, all paths.
Listening Is an Act of Love — Dave Isay (StoryCorps). From the StoryCorps oral-history project, a collection built entirely from everyday people interviewing each other. It is living proof of this chapter's thesis: the questions and the listening matter more than the gear, and anyone can get gold from anyone. Serves: 📱 Phone-first, 🎥 Creator.
Free online learning and channels
Blackmagic Design — official DaVinci Resolve training. Blackmagic publishes free, official training materials (downloadable guides and project files) for Resolve, the book's reference editor. When you cut your interview in Chapter 30, this is where to learn the actual buttons for the moves this chapter sets up. Serves: all paths, especially 📱 Phone-first (Resolve is free).
Curtis Judd (YouTube). One of the most reputable free resources on audio and lighting for video, with clear, no-hype tutorials on lav and shotgun placement, levels, and monitoring — exactly the §19.3 skills. If two-mic safety felt abstract, watch him place and level mics. Serves: 📱 Phone-first, 🎥 Creator, 💼 Pro-track.
Aputure — educational lighting content. The lighting-education material produced around Aputure (including their interview and cinematography breakdowns) is a strong free resource on shaping light for faces. Watch it as principle, not as a shopping list. Serves: 🎥 Creator, 💼 Pro-track.
No Film School (site & podcast). A long-running, reputable filmmaking site and podcast with practical articles and interviews-with-filmmakers. Good for interview technique, documentary workflow, and hearing how working professionals actually run a shoot. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎓 Student.
Film Riot (YouTube). A well-established, approachable filmmaking channel. Useful for the practical, "here's how we actually did it" register, including lighting and sound setups you can copy on a budget. Serves: 📱 Phone-first, 🎥 Creator.
Films and sequences to study
Study these as an interviewer, asking: where is the eyeline? How is it lit? How are the questions cut out? Add your observations to your Frame Log.
The Fog of War (2003) — Errol Morris. This chapter's Case Study 1. The definitive study of the direct-to-lens interview, the Interrotron, and the power of silence and patience with a guarded subject. Watch how one man in a chair, listened to well, sustains a feature. Serves: all paths.
The Thin Blue Line (1988) — Errol Morris. Morris's earlier landmark, built on interviews and stylized reenactment — a documentary so rigorous it helped overturn a wrongful conviction. Study how interview testimony is structured into an argument. Serves: 🎓 Student, 💼 Pro-track.
Shoah (1985) — Claude Lanzmann. A monumental, interview-driven documentary that relies almost entirely on testimony, with no archival footage. An extreme, demanding lesson in what patient, present interviewing can carry, and in the ethics of asking hard questions. Serves: 🎓 Student.
Ken Burns documentaries (e.g., The Civil War, 1990). The reference for the off-axis talking-head-plus-archival style §19.2 and §19.6 describe. Watch how consistent, clean interview looks intercut with archival material and voice-over — the exact grammar of the documentary interview. Serves: 🎥 Creator, 🎓 Student.
Interview-driven feature docs (e.g., 20 Feet from Stardom, Amy, Won't You Be My Neighbor?). A cluster of acclaimed documentaries built substantially on interviews and testimony. Watch several and compare eyeline, lighting, and how each hides its cuts (B-roll vs. two-camera). Serves: 🎥 Creator, 💼 Pro-track.
StoryCorps animated shorts. Short pieces built from real StoryCorps audio interviews, illustrated with animation. Proof that the audio — the questions and the answers — is the film; the picture serves the voice. A great study in the primacy of the interview itself. Serves: 📱 Phone-first, 🎥 Creator.
Tools and apps
DaVinci Resolve (free). The book's reference NLE, and a full color and audio suite. Everything you shoot in this chapter you can cut, color, and mix here at no cost — the phone-first reader's complete post pipeline. Serves: all paths.
A transcription tool (for the paper edit). Transcribing your interview turns hours of talk into a searchable document you can build a story from — the paper edit of Chapter 30. Resolve and most platforms now auto-generate transcripts and captions; a dedicated transcription app speeds it up. Accurate transcripts also become your captions (Chapter 36), so clean two-mic audio pays off twice. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎓 Student.
A teleprompter app (for the direct-address exercise). For Case Study 1's "Your Turn" — the direct-to-lens interview — a teleprompter app on a tablet, or a phone showing a video call, gives your subject a face to look at right beside the lens, a poor-person's Interrotron. Serves: 🎥 Creator, 💼 Pro-track.
A field recorder or two-channel interface (as you go paid). Not required to start — a wired lav into your phone plus the camera's mic is a real two-recording safety. But when interviews become billable work, a small two-channel recorder that takes a lav and a shotgun at once is the highest-value audio purchase you'll make. Buy it as a principle (redundancy), not a brand. Serves: 💼 Pro-track.
In the Blink of an Eye and the interview edit — a pairing. Read Murch (above) alongside any interview-driven documentary and watch specifically for the cut into and out of each answer: where the picture changes, where the sound leads (the L-cut), where a pause is held. The interview you shoot in this chapter becomes the edit you study in Chapters 28–30, so training your eye on how great interview edits breathe now pays off directly later. Serves: 💼 Pro-track, 🎓 Student.