Preparation and planning.

For our documentary, we have chosen to interview random teenagers of

the public, and also industry professionals such as doctors, and nurses.
When dealing with industry professionals, we as a group had to make sure
that we were approaching it in the most professional manner possible. I
emailed two hospitals, they were Queen Marys Hospital, and Darent
Valley Hospital.
After a short wait, Queen Marys hospital emailed me back, giving me the
correct contact details, here is the reply from Queen Marys:

After receiving the reply from Queen Marys I decided to do some research
on Alcohol Anonymous and I found out that they have a contact
centre/advice centre in Sidcup on Tuesdays after which starts at 12:30am,
so I emailed them asking if it would be possible to do some filming with
the people involved in the group, or with the staff.
Filming on this topic with people who attend alcohol anonymous can be a
very sensitive issue, so we have to make sure we ask the right questions,
and we also have to be careful not to offend or upset any of them, even
though we would not plan to do this intentionally. We understand that AA
is a alcohol recovery programme, and this would be the perfect place to
film some of our documentary, as it includes some people who have/have
had serious alcohol related problems.
The reason we are so keen to film in AA is because we are trying to make
sure that teenagers understand the full consequences and effects binge
drinking will eventually have on them.

Malcolm & Richards Prep.

I will now talk about the urban side of our documentary, as Renata Pereira
is doing the professional side of the documentary where she interviews
professionals about binge drinking. In the urban documentary, me and
Malcolm Shoeinde will go out and interview those on the streets asking
them their questions about binge drinking and so on. We will go out to the
areas of Thamesmead, Plumstead and Woolwich where there is a large
variety of different people this way we can get balanced answers in our
interview due to the large mix of people. Also these areas have different
ethnicities and also a large amount of young people this is why I want to
go to these area as they are perfect for our documentary which is aimed
at 16-35 years old so this allows the audience at home to relate to the
young people in the interview. I have thought of a list of question which
we are going to ask them (this will be written below). Due to it being an
urban interview where we find people to ask questions we cant really
make any set arrangements per say, however we did think about what
would happen if we couldnt find anyone. So we made a backup plan
where we have 5 people who we have made arrangements with to
pretend, in case it was not possible to find anyone on the streets this
shows that we have thought about what will happen if it went wrong and
that we are thinking of other options. These arrangements with the people
will pretend as if they were bystanders just general members of the
public while in reality it is all set up during pre-production obviously the
audience wont know this as well will show it as if we just find them on the
streets. However we will actually try our best to look for people on the
streets, and ask them questions as we want this to be as realistic as
possible.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Do you drink regularly?

Would you consider yourself to be a binge drinker?
Did binge drinking affect any members of you family in any way?
Do you know the effects of binge drinking?
What advice do you want to give the young adults and teenagers at
home?

These are the five basic questions which we will ask in each interview just
to get the corer answers out of them. However this is not all the question
we will be asking, there will be variety of much more depending on how
each interviewee answers the question which will allow us to ask a
question related to the answer they have given.

For our previous work, we had to look at bad interviews, and good ones,
and example of a bad interview was:
An example of this would be frank Lampard being interviewed by James
O'Brien on LBC 97.3 radio station (http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=Bob4cmNSfvE). The interviewer insinuated that frank Lampard is not

looking after his children because they are living in temporary
accommodation. He described Lampard as weak & Scum and also acting
like the stuff in the newspapers are all true. The tone of his voice was very
spiteful and this makes him sound ignorant because the statement made
he says make it look like all he does is believe in newspaper stories and
doesnt listen to the other side of the story. The statement made frank
look like an irresponsible man. Frank then argued that the interviewer
does not know the full story as he does everything within his power to
look after his kids. He said the reason why they are living in temporary
accommodation is because his relationship with his girlfriend had broken
down. The use of bad language still will not affect the target audience of
this radio station however it makes James OBrien look very immature and
childlike. Secondly because the audience of LBC like to listen to open
discussions it will still keep their audiences appeal. A Person who is very
good at interviewing like Oprah will know that even though frank is in the
wrong and that he might be the person to blame they will still need to
speak calmly to the interviewee so that that they can bring out the proper
evidence so that the audience will have reasoning and so they do not
judge wrongly. James OBrien did not try to put an effort doing this. If he
had acted very politely and calmly behaved he would have been able to
get more answers by using question types like progress from point to
point and building bridges and this would of got him the in order to get
significant responses to keep the interview straight to point. Combative
interviewing is when the interview becomes a discussion or a slight
quarrel as two or more attitudes or opinions are often shared and voiced
and not just one answer from one individual. These types of interviews
can be humorous for the audience to watch as people enjoy seeing a type
of encounter
That shows a very strong but slightly absurd view on life or a specific
situation. It can be something like the opinions on a relationship. From
listen to this this interview you can see that James OBrien uses the
combative style when talking to his guest as he is constantly arguing and
seeming very ignorant therefore cause conflict in the process.
James OBrien says a lot of comments like as you know, in the
newspaper in the last couple days, youve been painted as a bit of a
rat and I just would like to give you the opportunity to defend yourself
to begin with this is not actually a question it is a statement that he will
then say a question after with. This shows bad interviewing abilities
because he could of said a statement and carried it with an open question
so he will be able obtain himself with more information on why the
newspaper are saying false statements. As a result it turned out to be a
leading statement rather than a leading question. Also in this interview,
James OBrien does not use questions but instead makes untruthful and

unknowing reports that seem as questions. However this does not reflect
the LBCs target audience and because the interview starts to get tense.
The DJs on a station like this are meant to be smart and mature people
and this is because this is the type of audience they attract and aim at.
Though, just before the conversation is about to end, the interviewer
James OBrien starts to show his maturity and from this you can see his
experience because he attempts to ease himself and Frank Lampard so
that the interview can now run slickly. The style of the interview was very
aggressive and condescending. Mainly because he did not give Lampard
the space to explain his own side of the story. He portrayed Lampard as an
irresponsible dad that allows his children to live in a temporary
accommodation, whilst Lampard is living in his own house.

We will avoid all of the stated above by:

Making sure we do not come across as combatative- this is not the

style of interview we want to go for.
Keeping our questions simple, and to the point.
Keeping a calm tone of voice.
Allowing the interviewee to talk without interrupting them without a
reason.
Making sure we have all the facts right.

As we do not know what interviewees we will have for our

documentary(apart from the doctors), we could not contact them and
arrange times with them, although we do plan to approach random
people, we will make sure we are safe.