How Are You Using B-Roll and Recorded Interviews?
A great cup of coffee is simple to make. It consists of two ingredients: coffee and water.
By adjusting the quantity and quality of these two basic ingredients, we can influence the taste of our morning coffee. With practice and experimentation, we can learn how to make a damn decent cuppa joe -- and even develop our own system for brewing it each morning.
Just as our morning coffee consists of two basic ingredients, our documentary film consists of two essential elements.
What our characters say (recorded interview), and
What our characters do (b-roll)
Two Essential Elements of Documentaries
There are some exceptions to this – of course. But in verité style filmmaking, we rely on our characters' voices, actions, and environments to tell the story.
Filmmakers collect these components in the form of recorded interviews and b-roll.
What Your Characters Say
Your characters are the people whose expertise, anecdotes, and actions propel your story forward. Their recorded interviews narrate your film. In the cued video below, you’ll see series of recorded interviews from the film A House Without Snakes (dir. Daniel Koehler). The sequence begins at 3:52 and ends at 4:28. Let’s take a look:
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 4:28 (36 sec.).
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 4:28 (36 sec.).
In this example, the recorded interviews not only provide valuable soundbites, they serve the story visually.
Candid moments from your characters can affect your audience in emotionally captivating ways. How your character says something – their body language and delivery – can give the audience more than just information. Hesitation, indifference, joy, despair, all of these emotions can be seen – not just heard.
PRO TIP:
When interviewing your characters, allow for 3-5 seconds of silence between them finishing a statement and your followup. This brief moment of silence allows your character to reflect on what was just said, and can oftentimes yield a candid reaction. Your editor will also appreciate having a clean soundbite.
The most important part of interviews are the high-quality soundbites you recorded from your characters. These words and phrases are the building blocks of your entire film. It’s therefore crucial to record the highest quality audio that you can.
If your recorded interviews are not serving your story visually, consider covering those soundbites with relevant b-roll.
In the cued video below, watch how Koehler pairs interview soundbites with supporting b-roll. The sequence begins at 10:32 and ends at 11:40. Let’s take a look:
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 11:40 (1 min. 8 sec.).
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 11:40 (1 min. 8 sec.).
What Your Characters Do
In the example you just watched, the character’s interview audio was paired with a verité b-roll sequence. Notice how there was no need for us to see Kitsiso speaking during this sequence. In fact, had this been a static “talking head” sequence of the character speaking directly to the camera, it would have lost momentum and energy – the audience would have tuned out.
Our characters’ actions can be just as telling and captivating as their words – if not more so.
We capture this in the form of b-roll: supplemental footage your editor can cutaway to in order to show related scenery or action.
PRO TIP:
Shoot b-roll after you’ve conducted a character’s interview session in order to capture scenes, locations, and actions that your character referred to.
In the final cued video below, you'll notice that the first minute and twenty seconds of A House Without Snakes is entirely b-roll, sound design, and music – no interview audio. This b-roll sequence is comprised of establishing shots. In this case, Koehler is slowly immersing you into the world of the story; giving you a glimpse into the pastoral way-of-life that his character's ancestors have lived for centuries. The sequence begins at 0:00 and ends at 1:20. Let’s have a look:
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 1:20 (1 min. 20 sec.).
This is a cued video. Press play to watch the cued sequence. Pause the video at 1:20 (1 min. 20 sec.).
Works Mentioned:
A House Without Snakes
Daniel Koehler, dir.
In Botswana, two young Bushmen struggle to build their futures in the wake of their people's relocation from their ancestral homeland. Ketelelo looks to education as a way to reinvent himself and provide for his family. Meanwhile, Kitsiso wonders whether he should stay in his ancestral homeland to honor his father or seek a new life in town. A House Without Snakes is an intimate coming-of-age portrait that explores the tension between modernity and tradition through the lens of two individuals’ hopes and fears.
Daniel Koehler (Director/Producer)
Edward Pettitt (Producer)
Gil Talmi (Original Music)
Kebabonye Molatlhiwa (Associate Producer)
Gisela Fulla-Silvestre (Re-Recording Sound Mixer)
Vladimir Kucherov (Colorist)