How to Learn What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know — The Art of Interviewing for Documentary

Errol Morris interviews John Le Carre in the documentary “The Pigeon Tunnel”

I fell into documentary filmmaking through my first job at VICE. I didn’t have a concept of what it meant to interview someone on camera. As a shooter/editor, I would just let the camera roll and ask whatever came to mind — like a normal conversation.

I remember watching Ken Burns and Werner Herzog documentaries and wondering: How is everyone so eloquent? How is everyone so open — just baring their chest to the camera? What did the director do to make them so?

Later, when I started working on Discovery Channel docs, I realized my meandering interviews took way too long to conduct — and even longer to edit. So, I started preparing more, studying interview techniques, and refining my approach.

As an on-the-ground director/producer, I had constant opportunities to test and improve. And as an editor, I learned — sometimes painfully — what worked and what didn’t.

There are many technical aspects to interviewing, but the single hardest thing — the essence of what makes a great interviewer great — is the ability (or willingness) to discover what you don’t know you don’t know.

The best interviews feel like excavation, for these reasons:

1. You can’t know everything. Most of what you’ve researched comes from existing sources — the internet, books, or even previous documentaries. If you rely only on that, you’re just repeating old material.
2. What you already know, your subject has likely already talked about. It’s no longer fresh. They’re just giving you what they assume you want to hear. You’ll never get the good stuff that pulsates with life.
3. It’s the point. Making a documentary is not about turning your treatment into runtime. Discovery is part of documentary process as it is part of life. In documentary filmmaking, things not going to plan is a feature, not a bug.

First, Make the Interview Comfortable

Nothing else matters before you create physical comfort and good vibes.

• Make sure the chair is comfortable.
• Room temperature matters.
• Provide water.
• Check the eyeline is comfortable to maintain. The offline interviewer is not too far/high/low, and they’re not staring into blinding lights.
• Minimize unnecessary crew. No phone-scrolling PAs. Interviews can be long. Too much attention isn’t good either — it’s not Broadway.

Put Down Your Assumptions

You’re a documentary filmmaker. You made a treatment for your film, meaning you have an agenda, made out of your assumptions.

A good documentary filmmaker is aware that their assumptions are just that, and not let assumptions run the show.

The moment your subject feels that you are just fitting them into a pre-scripted narrative, you’ve lost them. They will either turn defensive or, worse, submit to your agenda and give you exactly what you want to hear.

Every new person you interview has a “virgin” mind before they meet you and your crew. Try to meet them there at first.

I’ve worked with commercial clients and network executives who want to preview interview questions and dictate what answers we “must” get.

As a director, it’s part of your job to have to strategically navigate those conversations. But don’t fall into the trap of treating the interview like a checklist.

Start With “Grand Tour” Questions

These are broad prompts that allow the subject to tell their story in their own way.

Errol Morris often begins with:

“I want to talk about [topic], but I don’t know where we should begin…”

Steven Hathaway, editor of The Pigeon Tunnel, discussed this on The Art of the Cut podcast with Steve Hullfish. You can actually hear Errol Morris ask Robert McNamara in The Fog of War and John le Carré in The Pigeon Tunnel, “I don’t know where to begin.”

Errol Morris opens his interview with John le Carré with a classic “grand tour” question: “Where should we begin?” in The Pigeon Tunnel (2023), edited by Steven Hathaway,

This builds instant rapport because it tells the subject, I’m not just here to extract sound bites from you.

Interviews are about power dynamics. When your subject is sitting under your lights, in front of your camera, surrounded by your crew, you hold the power. If you want them to open up, give control back to them.

Some of my favorite grand tour questions:

• “Tell me about your experience with [topic] from the beginning.”
• “What was life like before [key event] happened?”
• “What’s something people don’t understand about this issue?”

Your grand tour is like a helicopter tour — you start high, looking for key places to zoom into. As your subject tells their story, listen for details — both in their words and body language:

• Personal experiences that support or disprove your assumptions.
• Pauses, hesitations, or emotions — signs that something deeper is left unsaid.
• Small throwaway details that could turn out to be key thematic or story threads.

How to Zoom In: Excavation Questions

1. Silence is a tool. Use it.

• If your subject pauses, don’t rush in to fill the silence. Going deep requires patience.
• Use your silence to create rhythm of speech. It signals that they have time to think before they speak.
• I had producers or network execs who thinks silence means that the interviewee needs help, and jumps in… shut them up with your eyes.

2. Ask simple, open-ended questions.

• “That’s interesting — can you tell me more about that?”
• “What do you mean by that?”
• “How did that feel in the moment?”

If a subject hesitates, it often means something bigger is underneath. Gently ask:

• “That seems important to you — why?”
• “I noticed you hesitated before answering. What’s on your mind?”

Closing the Interview: The “What Else” Questions

At the end of every interview, I do one last excavation pass to make sure I haven’t missed anything.

• “Is there anything else about this experience that stands out to you?”
• “What’s something about this that no one has ever asked you about?”

On a few occasions, I had a normal, run-of-the-mill interview suddenly turn into a gold mine after asking this question.

Errol Morris — one of the greatest interrogators in documentary history, the grandmaster of talking-head interviews.

What are your tips for conducting interviews?

Whether you’re a director in the interview chair or an editor who needs more options in the edit — share your experiences!