Conducting an Interview

Now you are going to get acquainted with some information about conducting an interview. If you are interested in more details, you can find this information on the following Internet site: www.roguecom.com/interview/module5.html.

Central to conducting any type of interview is establishing a productive interview climate [8]. It does not happen magically but develops in the interactions between an interviewer and an interviewee.

Interviews have an opening, body and closing. As the interviewer, you want to begin the interview in such a way that facilitates the interview process, ask questions that assist all parties in achieving their goals, and end the interview on a positive note.

1. OPENING – “breaking the ice”. The interview opening usually sets the tone for the remainder of the interview. Your goal is to establish a productive climate, so both you and your interviewee will participate freely and communicate accurately. Climate issues contribute to the mood or tone of the interview; both interviewer and interviewee are responsible for establishing the interview climate.

Formality level reflects differences in status between interview participants; evolves and can change during the interview process.

A. Nonverbal indicators of status include dress, proximity, location of the interview.

B. Verbal indicators of formality level include how participants address each other (titles or first names), how much “small talk” participants engage in, use of slang.

Rapport is the process of creating goodwill and trust between interviewer and interviewee.

A. First impressions greatly influence how rapport is established; avoid jumping to conclusions about others based on little information.

B. When you and the interviewee share a similar frame of reference or worldview, it is easier to establish rapport.

C. The interview’s formality level influences how rapport is established; for example, in more informal interviews, there is more “small talk” at the beginning, while in more formal interviews, the interviewer will tend to take a more direct approach.

2. BODY – asking questions. This is the main part of the interview. Here we'll look at the order or sequences in which you might ask the questions.

A. Funnel. Use this question sequence when the interviewee knows the topic well and feels free to talk about it, or when the person wants to express strong feelings. This is the most common of all question sequences for all types of interviews. In this sequence, the interviewer begins with broad, open-ended questions and moves to narrower, closed-ended questions. The interviewer may also begin with more general questions and gradually ask more specific questions.

B. Inverted Funnel. This question sequence is effective when an interviewee needs help remembering something or to motivate an interviewee to talk. In this sequence, the interviewer begins with narrow, closed-ended questions and moves to broader, open-ended questions. The interviewer may also begin with more specific questions and gradually ask more general questions.

C. Diamond. The Diamond question sequence combines the Funnel and Inverted Funnel sequences. Use this sequence when dealing with topics interviewees may find painful or difficult and therefore are reluctant to discuss. Begin with specific, closed-ended questions about a situation similar to the interviewee's, then ask general, open-ended questions about the interview, and finally ask specific, closed-ended questions about the interviewee's particular circumstances.

D. Tunnel. In this sequence, all questions have the same degree of openness. Also called the “string of beads” questions sequence, the Tunnel sequence allows for little probing and variation in question structure. It can be useful for simple, surface information interviews, but not for in-depth interviews.

3. CLOSING – concluding the interview. The closing brings the interview full circle. Your goal is to leave the interviewee feeling positive and satisfied with the interview.

Stages

A. Conclusion preparation: the interviewer is responsible for signaling upcoming conclusion, as with, "My final question..."

B. Final summary: is a consolidation of entire interview and provides a test of your listening and note taking skills

C. Post-interview discussion: informal; not part of the formal interview; the interviewer and interviewee engage in "chit-chat"

In conducting the information interview, you want to be prepared, yet flexible, and create a communication climate in which the interviewee will feel comfortable. Balance note-taking with maintaining eye contact with the interviewee. If you record the interview, be sure to ask the interviewee's permission before the interview. Don't rely solely on the audiotape for recording the interview as tape recorders can fail. Signal your interest, but avoid leading the interviewee to respond in particular ways. Listen carefully, ask secondary/probing questions, and use your Interview Guide to keep you on track.

TASK 6

Study the following interviews with famous actors. Identify the types of these interviews and analyze them from the point of view of their structure, questions asked and the atmosphere created. You can find these interviews in the Internet on the site: movies.about.com/od/interviewswithactors/Interviews_with_Actors_and_Actresses.html

1. Nicolas Cage Discusses “Drive Angry” in 3-D

By Rebecca Murray, About.com Guide

What kind of challenges did the 3D present to you as an actor? Also, how does it enhance your professional skills?

Nicolas Cage: “Well, I was very excited at first to see what I could do with the format. It’s my first live-action movie in 3D. I was like a kid in a candy store and I wanted to see if I could get my tongue into the fourth row of the audience in one scene. There’s a scene in the diner where I kissed the young lady. Thankfully, they cut that out of the movie but I wanted to try to do anything I could to mess with the format.”

“By the second week, it became very clear to me that it wasn’t that different than making any other movie with a 35mm camera. That is really a credit to Patrick Lussier because he is a pioneer of the new wave of 3D. He really sorted out all the bugs that might occur with it on his first, My Bloody Valentine, with 3D. He knew where to put the camera at any time so that the actors didn’t blow out the effect, because you can do that very easily. If you line up in such a way, you blow out the effect and it’s caused a lot of headaches for many filmmakers but not Patrick, so he was very confident. He knew exactly where to put the camera and we really got the movie done quite quickly as a result of his expertise.”

We always hear there’s a lot of technical choreography in sex scenes. How did you combine that with the technical choreography of an action scene?

Nicolas Cage: “Well, one of the things I would like to say about the now infamous gunfight / sex scene in the movie was I really had no idea how I would play that scene until almost three or four days before we shot it. If that scene works, it’s really because of Ms. Ross, Ms. Charlotte Ross. What she does in that sequence is sexy, but it’s more than that. It’s actually quite tragic and heartbreaking - the nervous breakdown that she goes through - and it’s a total credit to her acting ability to take us on that ride. It took a lot of guts.”

“I had this idea that Milton is a character that would raise more questions than answers and he’s the sort of character that would make you ask, 'What is he thinking? How would I do that in that scene?' I was thinking of Kama Sutra positions and what would be a position that would show Milton’s sort of anti-divineness because he’s not a divine Hindu spirit. He’s something from hell, a living dead man from hell. So then the idea of being in the clothes before a gunfight enjoying all the vices, the cigar and the Jack Daniels and the sex to me seemed like it would ring true for a guy that just broke out of hell. So that’s how that scene came together, and then Ms. Ross and I enjoyed a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken after the scene.”

What’s the visceral thrill of getting behind the wheel of a muscle car, and what’s in your garage?

Nicolas Cage: “Well, what’s in my garage is a Dodge Ram 3500 Laramie. I have a pickup truck. I like it. It’s a diesel Cummins engine, which is the same engine they use in the trains, and it’s actually really good for the environment. Unlike the hybrids which so many people think is good for the environment, you actually have to dump those batteries and it actually pollutes the environment, so the diesel truck is a better way to go.”

“Now, back to the movie. I love cars. There’s no secret that the automobile and I have had a pretty good relationship. I’m a good driver. I wouldn’t say I was an ace, but I’m a good driver. I grew up in the Wild West. I grew up here in Los Angeles, city built around the automobile. I know what I’m doing in a car. I thought it was just a real opportunity to drive as fast as I wanted and not get a speeding ticket, and that’s what I did. When I drive in a movie, it’s not unlike when I act. I go into a trance. I don’t really have skills but I just know what they want me to do and somehow it all works itself out. The only time it’s a problem for me is when somebody else is in the car, like Ms. Amber Heard, and then I start getting nervous that if something happens to them that I’m responsible, and then I’m not quite as effective.”

How fast did you go?

Nicolas Cage: “Well, Amber’s still raising her eyebrow at me because I said that I’ve been 180 miles per hour on the 405 freeway on a motorcycle and she doesn’t believe me, but it’s a true story. I did it coming home from work at 3 in the morning on another movie I made about cars called Gone in 60 Seconds. I bought a Yamaha-1 and I was doing 180 miles per hour home on the 405, and that’s really, really crazy but I did it. In this movie I went about 70 miles per hour at any given moment because we had cameras on the car and that’s about as fast as I could push it with cameras on the car mounted down onto the car. But still, it was mostly me driving and going into oncoming traffic. Those were some pretty fun days.”

What kind of beer was in the skull in the film?

Nicolas Cage: “Oh, I love that. First of all, Billy Burke is hilarious in the movie. I love his performance. He’s just so much fun to watch in that part of King. Believe it or not, I was reading a lot of Walt Whitman at the time, our poet laureate, Leaves of Grass and somewhere in Leaves of Grass Whitman just says in a stanza 'drinking mead from a skull.' I thought to myself, 'I like that, I would like to find a way to drink beer from a skull in this movie.' And the reason being kind of partly because I wanted Milton to have this kind of Celtic and Wotanic kind of modern primitive style about him. And also I wanted to see if there could be any way in my presentation of the skull, and I put a lot of thought into that - even did a few takes of it almost like a commercial, a beer commercial - to find a way to make the beer slosh out of the eye in such a way that my cup runneth over and have it look really inviting and appetizing and make people in the audience go, 'Wow, I know it sounds crazy, but I’d really kind of like to drink beer from someone’s skull right now.' That was the challenge.”

Did you have to balance not taking this movie too seriously?

Nicolas Cage: “I mean, even today the way we’re getting a chance to talk a little bit about it, I think you can see that anyone involved in the movie didn’t take it too seriously. There was a real sense of absurdist fun about it, knowing full well that the movie was going to be over the top and extreme and sort of celebrating the fun of that. But having said that even still, there is a heart in the movie and the heart is generated by Amber Heard’s performance and the relationship between her and my character because you see that it’s not really a romance. It’s something even more affectionate that goes into a familial place where it’s almost like an older brother or a paternal situation where there’s kindness towards one another, even though there are these two whacked out outlaws on the road. They still have feelings for one another, and I like that aspect of it as well. A good movie has to work on more than one level.”

What has Milton done? How long he’s been in hell? How did he get out?

Nicolas Cage: “Yeah, yeah, I have some answers that I will keep to myself. But for me, without saying too much about Milton because I want to keep him in that mystery zone, and he is like a ghost. He’s a living dead man. Whatever a ghost would be like, if a ghost walked into a room, it might be like a vacuum, it might suck all the air out of the room, it might just be very still and you’d probably wonder what is it thinking. I was trying to find ways of kind of giving that aura to Milton at any moment, at least that was the challenge I’d had in my own mind while I was filming it. I think the best examples of it are the scene in the church when Billy Burke, his character is not giving me the child and then he’s explaining what he did to my daughter. Whereas you would think that Milton would just start screaming and going nuts because it’s in the title, Drive Angry, it’s not that. It’s more like amused by this person. That’s what I wanted to convey, a kind of otherness. And, also, the scene at the trashcan; there’s an otherness to Milton that makes you think that he’s actually motivated by something more than just anger. The anger is from when he was alive. When he was alive, he was probably listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Buddy Holly, but after he broke out of hell, it’s all just wind chimes and Ravi Shankhar. No lyrics. Absolutely no lyrics.”

Was the rapport with William Fichtner there at the beginning? Do you hope there’s a sequel?

Nicolas Cage: “Well, I really enjoyed working with every member in this cast. Billy Burke, William Fichtner, Amber Heard, all of them lent their own unique style and sense of humor. One of my favorite lines in Drive Angry is from one of the supporting players, Joe Crest, towards the end of the movie. He says, 'We’re going to live forever.' That was the line that made me crack up the loudest. I laughed out loud with my son, and I haven’t stopped laughing since - and it was last night. But his delivery was hilarious. So yeah, I hope there’s another Drive Angry not only because of William Fichtner but Billy Burke and Amber as well. Great time working with them and Patrick.”

How is Ghost Rider 2 going? Was it fun to go back?

Nicolas Cage: ‘That Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is really going to be an amazing movie. I don’t normally talk like that about things I’ve worked on, but I just got finished with it and I’m so excited about what Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine got up to in that movie. It’s just really fresh and original. Mark is like a stuntman, camera operator, director all rolled into one. He’s literally risking his life to get shots. On roller blades, on bungee chords, he’s even patented the roller blading stuff because no one else in the business is doing it.” “And then Brian Taylor is just a walking encyclopedia about movies. We’ve had great conversations about all kinds of films, whether it’s Brian De Palma to Inishiro Honda. He’s the reason why I played Ghost Rider. He encouraged me to be the Ghost Rider as well as John Blaze. We got up to some stuff as Ghost Rider that the two of us designed together that I think is really going to mess with people’s minds. It’s not going to be like any other comic book movie you’ve seen. We keep stressing that Ghost Rider is the most supernatural superhero of all, and that’s really going to come out in this movie.”

2. Kristen Stewart Discusses “Breaking Dawn”

The Twilight Series Wraps Up with Two “Breaking Dawn” Movies

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