Ross Kemp and his interview style

 Ross Kemps techniques 

In our lesson today we watched some of Ross Kemps documentary 'Ross Kemp on gang' The reason for us watching this is because in preparation for our own documentaries we are currently looking at interview styles and the way they can be filmed. Throughout the documentary we watched today we noticed many different techniques he used to make his documentary up to standard. 

Ross kemp involves a lot of different people in his documentaries. He makes things very personal. A very clever way in which he does this is through the mis en scene, for example in the ‘Ross Kemp on gang’ doc that we just watched, he was interviewing a local gang member about why he does what he does. However, this section is filmed in a church, with the gang member wearing a t shirt that says ‘angel’ on the back. This is a very clever thing for Ross to do as it creates a huge contrast between the ‘angel’ and the church which are both very holy and sacred things, and then the gang member, who is does very scary and criminal things. This is a very subtle way of creating meaning without actually saying anything. 

Another thing that I’ve noticed during the documentary’s with Ross kemp is that when he is interviewing people, he makes them feel very comfortable. He does this by the amount of eye contact that he keeps throughout the interview and also telling them that they don’t have to answer any questions that they don’t feel comfortable with. It is very important to keep the person you are interviewing very relaxed to the point that they trust you, because otherwise people will start to tense up and not say everything that they really want to.

These are just two very key examples of things that people can do to make they’re documentaries better. I will need to consider both when I am making my own documentary. Especially as I am considering doing a participatory style documentary.