Tuesday 26 April 2016
Initial meeting and introduction
Having filmed the boxing match on the 5th of March, for the following week i had a hard time trying to get through to Oli as he mentioned that he had some last minute work that had popped up which he had to do for his sponsors, so i didn’t end up meeting up with him until Sunday the 13th of March, where i could finally sit down and have a proper pre interview with him, to find out about his life, what he was like growing up and the trials and tribulations that he had gone through, from his journey in boxing.
Following the brief discussion that i had with Oli at the end of his training session (as a deciding factor for whether or not that i was going to follow up on his story) he raised some interesting important stories to me, to which i prepared question to ask him during the pre-interview so that i could get more depth out of these stories, to potentially help construct them into the narrative structure for the portrait documentary.
The importance of this preinterview, was so that i could find out more about Oli’s upbringing and journey towards becoming a professional boxer, but also to know Oli well enough so that he feels relaxed around me and is able to trust me and tell me about potentially intimate emotional stuff that nobody knows about him; so that come to the interview day, he trusts me enough to open up and tell me about his history (Rosenthal and Eckhardt, 2016: 183)
Rosenthal, Alan and Ned Eckhardt. Writing, Directing, And Producing Documentary Films And Digital Videos. 5th ed. Southern Illinois U.P., 2016. Print.
The pre interview
Before we started discussion, i asked if i was able to record all of our conversation on my mobile phone, so that i could take further notes later on outside of our meeting, to which he agreed.
At first it started off with a brief discussion, just getting to know him more as a character, finding out about his personality etc… Then afterwards that’s when i began asking him questions about his upbringing, childhood experience, the mugging incident, plus secondary school, plus him beginning training.
During the conversation, there was some sensitive information that was touched upon, which was at first hard to get the answers out of Oli, as he had said that he’d blocked certain areas of his past out of his mind, but after talking more with him, he managed to recite some of his troubled upbringing when he was a youth.
Although we covered a lot of grounds during the interview, because i did not have a direct angle at how i wanted to structure the portrait, a lot of questions that i asked, i feel i could of asked more narrowed down questions about how he feels being a professional boxer, as i missed those types of questions out and focused more on his life and up-bringing.
Summarised results of Preinterview
Here’s a summarised result of the preinterview, there was more information covered during the interview, however, here’s what Oli’s overall story is about in a summarised form.
Growing up as a child, Oli was a bubbly kid always smiling and playing out with either his friends, or his older brother and sister. Then one day Oli was asked to go to the shop to purchase something. On route to the shops, Oli was held up by three older people at knife point. From that day, it totally shattered his expectation of life, making him scared and timid, which then led to him getting bullied throughout secondary school. The bullying got so serious that Oli tried self harming himself to avoid going to school and getting bullied. From that whole experience, he moved school for a fresh new start, taking up kickboxing, then moved onto amateur boxing, then turned over to a professional boxer.
Conclusion
Following this preinterview, i’m now going to listen through and transcribe the preinterview so that i can build up the narrative structure for the portrait documentary based off of the information that i extract from it. After i have done this it should give me more of an understanding and direction on the way the portrait documentary should go.
