Interview techniques

http://www.videomaker.com/article/14239-documentary-interview-tips - This website really helped me to identify the key necessities for interviewing for documentary, including set-up, positioning and how to pose your questions for the most useful and informative responses. 

Open and closed questions:

Open: How are you?
Open can give a longer/bigger response, but the response is less controlled.

Closed: How would you describe you are feeling?
Closed can give a more detailed and controlled response, but the response maybe shorter.

Planning Setups:
Set/Shot:
Meaning to construct a  set or shot, in a location and setup all other equipment around the shot.

Framing:
People mostly need talking space, by having them face the opposite way to where they are int he frame.
Mise en scene (what is included in the interview) can say a lot, give quite a bit of cinematic language.
Have the interviewee looking just away from frame, while having the interviewer just sitting/standing off camera.
Having the interviewer talking slightly left to the camera is more natural (maybe linked to direction we read books.)

Developing shot lists:
Planning shot lists to use for cut aways through storyboarding and Location Recces one you get to the locations etc.

Shooting Coverage:
Shoot enough to edit together the length of documentary you want to shoot. Meaning shoot pretty much as much as possible so you have as much media to work with as possible. For example, this means taking photos that you could use in the credits. Taking recordings of people, surroundings to overlay on footage that may have bad

Know your contributors:
Have the people you work with feel comfortable, get to know them inside out and talk to them.
Ask some of the question you are going to ask in the interview, before you conduct it, to give you an idea of who they will respond and how you can base your documentary around that etc.
Make sure you  have consent from everyone/all your contributors, so you can have full control of your content. Permissions include locations/ music and archive footage/media etc.

Notes:
-Interviews are the back bone of most documentaries
Producer needs to be very sociable and supportive of interviewee.
-Have interview questions ready and planned, including having warm up questions to relax and make interviewee feel comfortable.
-Have questions planned relative to your desired story and/or edit, making it easier to edit in the interview with your documentary subject. Meaning to have your question progress and add to the structure and story of your documentary.
-Remember to ask most basic questions, to make sure the audience are always aware about what the interviewee are talking about and who they are in comparison to the story or subject of the documentary.