Doing interviews on video used to raise anxiety over costs, camera angles, and physical appearance, and whether bright lights and a camera crew would distract the interviewee and diminish the intimacy of the interview. Digital equipment has now made it so much more practical to capture oral history visually that the excuses for not using video have become less valid. Digital video cameras have reduced the need for extra lighting, sound equipment, and crew. They have lessened the need for studios to control sound and light conditions and allowed interviews to take place in more natural settings. Video recordings also vastly expanded the creative uses of the interviews.
Memories are recounted in more than words. Transcripts can indicate laughter, sobs, finger pointing, or fist shaking. But some expressions and gestures are too complex or subtle to reduce to words. When Richard Sweterlitsch audio recorded an interview with the Italian-American Sophia Bielli about the granite industry in Barre, Vermont, he realized that her language was not just verbal. “Sophia spoke with her hands punctuating her oral statements, and with her face and eyes she communicated her intensity and reactions to what she was saying,” he observed. “It was obvious that I had to document the visual along with the aural.”1
Transcripts, audio recordings, and videos all impart the same basic information, but video provides an extra dimension to oral history interviews. Transcripts reduce language to written symbols. Audio recordings convey tone, rhythm, volume, and speech patterns. But the facial expressions and body language captured by video reveal even more of an interviewee’s personality. A smile, a wink, a frown, a look of perplexity would be missed in an audio interview and convey more than what can be reproduced in the recording.
The setting in which the interview takes place can also add color and context. For many families, videoed oral histories with elderly relatives are treasured keepsakes. For museums and archives, video interviews expand the potential uses of oral histories as valuable resources for exhibits and documentaries. The Smithsonian Institution used video interviews with zoologists not only to talk about but also to show changes in zoo facilities and animal care. History Associates, Inc. conducted a video history of a large Washington, DC law firm, producing a video that mixed interviews with film footage around the offices and around the capital. Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture videoed African American dance traditions. The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York incorporates a series of ten-minute films combining video oral histories and film footage throughout its exhibitions. Producer Steven Spielberg has underwritten the filming of tens of thousands of interviews for the Survivors of Shoah Visual History Foundation. San Francisco’s Legacy Project video interviews and captures the motions of dancers dying of AIDS.2
Video is highly practical when recording group interviews. Anyone who has tried to transcribe an interview with multiple interviewees knows the frustration and helplessness of not being able to tell who is speaking, since voices in a group sound impossibly alike. Speakers will interrupt each other, cut in, and speak simultaneously, all chaotic conditions for the transcriber. One solution is to assign someone to sit in the session and note the order of speakers, but a video provides a much more precise means of distinguishing speakers.
Video interviewing requires more equipment for recording, processing, and preservation—and some new skills. Some interviewees might not warm up quickly to the cameras, might become more self-conscious, and might have more trouble speaking candidly. A video interview can result in hours of visually static images of a “talking head.” Practitioners need to be assured that video technology has advanced to the point where it is worth the investment, that the video can be considered reliable, that the recordings will last, and that an archives can afford to maintain them.3
Behind their pragmatic reasons, the reluctance of many oral histories to try videotaping suggested “technophobia.” Similar fears had caused a few interviewers to use reel-to-reel tape recorders long after the majority had switched to more portable and affordable cassette recorders. They had good reasons for their caution—reel-to-reel tape was superior to cassettes for archival preservation—but “we’ve never done it that way before” is a poor excuse for not exploring and trying new equipment. While veteran oral historians hung back, National History Day judges observed that high school-age students were quick to master new technologies and that the videos they produced were often impressively polished, professional, and creative.
Some projects video every interview, but others use cameras more selectively. There are advantages to conducting audio oral histories first in order to collect basic information, and then return to video a portion of the interview, allowing the cameras to illustrate the oral history. The video segment may cover new ground or repeat some questions to recapture highlights of the previous session. Video interviews with dancers, artists, and craftspeople can be devoted to recording them at work or to having them describe and explain their creations. Having recorded most of the interview on audio gives the interviewer and the interviewee a better idea of what to expect during the video session, making them both a little more comfortable in front of the camera.4
Researchers have discovered that the video portions of an interview can be more quotable than the audio portions. If the video interviews serve as summaries of longer series of audio interviews, the interviewees have had some time to think about their responses and, perhaps because they are also more conscious of the cameras, tell their stories more succinctly. Interviewees, in a sense, edit themselves the way a film editor might cut a story down to size. Not only does this make for better video, but the transcripts of the video segments are also often more compact and articulate than the sometimes rambling versions of the audio recordings.
Documentarians often resort to coaxing an interviewee to repeat a phrase, louder, with different emphasis, or in more complete sentences. The necessity of some staging in video offends those practitioners who believe an oral history should always be authentic and unrehearsed. In fact, there has never been any truth to the adage that “photos never lie.” Just as Civil War photographers rearranged bodies on the battlefield to heighten the visual effect, modern documentary makers often choose to meld history with artistry.5
If the ultimate objective is to produce a documentary or mount an exhibit, then it makes sense to video every session of every interview. But if the objective is an archival collection for all types of research, selective videoing is more cost-effective. Vivian Perlis, director of the Oral History and American Music Project at Yale University, has described the video component as “the finishing touch” of their oral histories. Initially, the project historians conducted videos of all their interviews at the homes of interviewees, such as Aaron Copeland, but they came to realize that some musicians are “more filmic” than others and that the expense of regular on-site interviewing was growing unmanageable. They did subsequent videotaping at a studio at Yale and even then videoed only major figures rather than all interviewees.6
Projects that give interviewees the option of being recorded on audio or video report that almost everyone chooses video, even if (or especially because) the video will be posted on the Internet. Video cameras have become sufficiently small and compact to be hardly more distracting than an audio recorder. Video interviewers have also employed any number of techniques to get people talking and at ease in front of the camera. They record in a setting where the interviewees will feel most comfortable. They ask them about their childhoods and ask about cherished possessions they might show.7
Video specialists recommend that interviewers explain the equipment to interviewees, demonstrate how it works, make sure that they are seated comfortably, and ask them to make eye contact with the interviewer rather than the camera, which should be placed to the side of the interviewer.8
In fact, television and home videos are so commonplace in modern society that interviewees are far less likely to be put off by cameras than might be expected. Video interviews with elderly residents in nursing homes, for instance, show that even people never before videoed quickly feel at ease and talk naturally on camera. Keep in mind, however, that interviewees can become fatigued and not look their best for the camera. Some video historians have raised the ethical question of what obligation a project has to interviewees who, because they slumped or were nervous or made awkward gestures, are disappointed or embarrassed over their video appearance.9
Sometimes the interviewer can be more nervous than the interviewee on camera. Listening carefully to what is being said and thinking ahead to the next question, interviewers also have to wonder about how they appear themselves (although interviewers are usually not seen in the picture). It takes some practice to switch from audio to visual taping. The Oral History Association once sponsored a debate between a video supporter, who had conducted all of his interviews on video, and a video skeptic, who had previously expressed deep-felt reservations that the camera destroys the intimacy needed to establish rapport in an interview. Before the debate took place, however, the skeptic decided that to be fair he needed to do a video interview himself. At the debate, he admitted that to his astonishment it was the best interview he had ever conducted. Not only had he been freed from monitoring the recorder, but the crew had been unobtrusive and the interviewee had no problem talking on camera. Delighted with the results, the skeptical interviewer became an enthusiastic convert to videoed interviews, forcing the video supporter to interject a few words of caution about video’s potential problems into his presentation on its benefits.
Interviewees need to be informed of the purpose of the interview, of any special requirements for videoing, of their legal rights, and of the need for their signature on a release form. For conducting video on location, interviewees need to know about, and give permission for, setting up equipment in their homes. Some interviewers recommend appropriate dress to interviewees or at least advise them on the types of colors and patterns to avoid (white or black, and clothes with bold stripes or patterns). Interviewers should be available to talk with interviewees in advance of the interview to answer their questions and satisfy their concerns. Such information and reassurance often helps interviewees feel comfortable with the video medium, encouraging them to speak as candidly as possible.
The medium definitely affects the message. Oral historians who work with video report that they have had to reformulate questions to elicit the type of information that makes for better visual presentation. They often have replaced abstract and generalized questions with more specific inquiries, asking fewer “why” questions and more “how” questions. They have asked interviewees to demonstrate how equipment worked or to go through their usual routines, eliciting the type of detail that an audio interview could never approach.10
Shifts in questioning become more pronounced when curators, exhibitors, documentary makers, and material culture specialists conduct their video interviews with specific ends in mind. The museum curator might be seeking a video of a worker talking about and demonstrating a mechanical or artistic process to accompany the actual machinery or display in the museum. The questions would be aimed precisely toward that end. The National Park Service set up lights and cameras in the home of Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia, and had Carter conduct a tour of the house and grounds. Although the interview raised questions about Carter’s life and career, and particularly about his post-presidential years, the chief focus was on the architecture of the house and an inventory of the Carters’ furniture, memorabilia, and other belongings. Eventually, when the house passes to the National Park Service as a historic site, the videos will enable curators to re-create the environment in which the Carters lived. Excerpts from the interviews will then be shown at the visitors’ center.11
Although the type of question may change, the way in which questions are posed should not. However complete their transfer from the aural to the visual medium, oral historians must maintain their professional standards and avoid the temptation to emulate the more aggressive television news interviewers. Interviewees may pose, but oral history interviewers should never play to the cameras.
All interviews involve a certain amount of performance, which can be heightened by the camera. Interviewers note that the intrusiveness of a camera and sometimes a crew can disrupt the cozy conversational style of an audio interview. “It was no longer a personal chat between Ray and myself,” commented one interviewer when he switched from audio to visual, “but something more public for both of us.”12
The performance aspect of an interview is not necessarily a detriment. The Women in Journalism Oral History Project conducted multiple audio sessions and one video session with each interviewee. For the most part, the video interview covered the highlights of material already covered in the audio recordings. I tapped the collection extensively while writing a history of the Washington press corps and at the end realized that almost all of my citations were from the transcripts of the video sessions. By that point, interviewees had rehearsed their stories by telling them during the audio sessions and could express themselves more succinctly for the cameras. The stories were virtually the same, but the syntax and style of the video interviews proved much easier to quote, whether because they were recapping what they had previously said or performing for the camera—perhaps both.13
While filming a documentary on an old movie theater, an oral historian arranged to record people’s reactions when they reentered the building after many years and then moved to a more comfortable spot to do sit-down interviews, where she could better control the sound and lighting. She found that the mix of locations worked best and encouraged those who plan to do video interviews to “think beyond the camera.”14
Studios are artificial—perhaps even intimidating—settings for interviews. As a result, many interviewers would rather bring the camera to the interviewee’s homes or equally familiar surroundings. The natural setting provides a more interesting backdrop and usually an abundance of stimulants for interviewee’s memories. The Smithsonian Institution has conducted video oral histories in the laboratories and workshops of its scientists and curators. The Minnesota Historical Society similarly videoed on location, from farmyards to boat docks, after first completing audio interviews. Once the audio segments were made, several interviewees were selected to retell portions of their stories on camera and to point out places or demonstrate activities related to their testimony.15 By letting the interviewees “set the stage,” selecting the most comfortable or fitting setting for their interviews, the choices they make are potentially informing and are part of the retelling as a performance—since performances include staging.16
While more visually interesting, natural settings add to the problems of doing a video interview, including the inconvenience of moving equipment; the obstacles to acceptable sound quality; and the unpredictability of light, sound, and background noise when videoing outdoors. Video interviewers need to know the limitations of the equipment and must be prepared to solve technical problems in the field. They need to prepare checklists so that equipment is not forgotten. Taking video to an interviewee’s home or place of work may require an advance trip to the site to decide how to set up the equipment. Considerations include seating the interviewee away from the glare of a window, avoiding noisy rooms, being conscious of wind and other outdoor noises—from birds to buses—and watching out for inquisitive neighbors and dogs. When taping outside, the wind may create noise or play havoc with the interviewee’s hair, distracting viewer attention. The sun may cast unflattering shadows, and clouds may cause the light to fluctuate during taping.17
A studio setting improves quality control for video interviewing but often results in “talking heads” and lacks the variation in images that improves and enlivens a documentary. One compromise would be to conduct part of the interview in a studio and then take a camera to follow interviewees through more natural settings—walking around their homes or neighborhoods, at a factory, going down a road by themselves or with the interviewer. These images can later be edited, with the studio audio used as a voice-over. Still photographs also can be interspersed.
After the interview has been completed, a “sweeping pan” can be taken of the room where the interview took place to capture the interview environment for the historical record. Photographs from a family album can also be videoed at the end of the interview. Known as “cutaways,” this additional footage can be interspersed later throughout the interview to vary the visual effects.
Tom Lean, who interviewed British scientists for the National Life Stories project, observed that his subjects often needed to describe how things fit together or moved, “such as the trajectory of a rocket or how data flows inside a computer.” While they spoke, their gestures reinforced their words, conveying speed, scale, movement, and interaction. He felt that asking them to explain what they did with their hands for an audio recording would be inadequate. The visual memories were among the most striking parts of every interview. “Descriptions of people, instrument readouts, items of equipment, layouts of laboratories and research establishments, remind us that there is a rich visual culture to science that it might just be possible to capture on video,” he concluded. So he took interviewees “back to places where they worked, creating a powerful contrast between their own memories of the site and how it stands now” to illustrate change graphically.18
Digital and other video cameras are relatively affordable, but a full-fledged, good quality video oral history is not inexpensive. Costs range widely but basically include fees for the interviewer’s preliminary research, interview time, travel and transportation expenses, editing of the interviews, and possible editing time and facilities for documentary presentations.
When the interview is completed, transcribers or indexers are needed. Duplicate recordings must be made for archival preservation and use, and sometimes copies of the recording or transcript must be given to the interviewee. General office expenses and supplies cannot be overlooked. Those costs mount up. When applying for grants to do video histories, it is essential not to underestimate the costs, or else operating expenses will evaporate well before the project is completed. In fact, most granting agencies and foundations have acquired a good sense of the financial requirements of video oral history and dismiss applications that are underbudgeted—as sure sign of the applicant’s inexperience.
Modern culture has grown so video-oriented that projects may find it harder to raise funds unless they are producing video. Corporate sponsors see commercial possibilities in using the video on websites, mobile phone apps, and documentaries. Bourbon distillers, for instance, financially supported the University of Kentucky’s video interviews of their industry as a means of not only preserving their corporate history but also of promoting heritage tourism along the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.19
An interviewer needs to concentrate fully on the give-and-take of the interview. Running an audio recorder offers distractions enough, but doing a video interview involves so many tasks that it is generally advisable to bring along someone with expertise in handling the equipment. In particular, one must regularly monitor a video interview. Interviewees will shift around or slump in their seats and, before long, will be half out of the picture unless you adjust the camera. Remote monitors allow one to see what the camera is recording and to adjust the camera angles accordingly. Yet paying close attention to the monitor can keep the interviewer from listening to what is being said.
Before the advent of digital cameras, video producers considered it a grievous mistake for the interviewer to try to be the camera operator as well. Then digital cameras offered automatic focus and sharper images without additional lighting. As a result, experienced video interviewers who once relied on a crew have found that digital cameras enable them to operate entirely on their own. Less experienced interviewers, however, should keep in mind that amateur filming diminishes the ultimate usefulness of the video images. Make sure that those operating the equipment are fully aware of the project’s objectives, of the mood it is seeking, and of any interviewee mannerism to be recorded. A video interview is a collaborative effort, not only between the interviewer and the interviewee but also between the interviewer and the technicians responsible for the quality control of the video recording.
Even an experienced film crew may not be used to recording oral histories. They need to expect long answers to questions and to shoot them continuously, rather than capture an image more dramatically, for instance, zooming in for close-ups and pulling back for wide shots. Since video oral history may be used by different researchers for different ends, consistency is more valuable than artistic maneuvers. Most importantly, those making the videos also need to know that these recordings are meant to last in perpetuity.20
Numbers vary according to project budgets, but the functions that have to be handled are the same, regardless of the size of the staff. In better-funded projects, these functions are divided among several staff members; the staff of smaller projects wear many hats. All oral history projects, audio or visual, need a director who will set the agenda, raise and administer funds, handle contracts, maintain the paperwork, and supervise the rest of the personnel.
If the aim is to produce a documentary, you’ll want a crew. This would include a producer (who may be the project director or the interviewer doing double duty) to choose the interviewees, the times and the sites of the interviews, and the crew to conduct the interviews. A director (who may also be producer) supervises the technical crew and the setting of the lights and cameras and maintains the general aural and visual standards of the day’s taping. A camera operator (who may also be the director) composes the shots, videos the interview, and monitors the recording. Larger projects may employ a sound operator to handle the microphones and monitor the audio recording levels, and a “grip,” or assistant, to set up and take down the equipment before and after the interview. A production assistant could take care of the paperwork, get release forms signed, handle the master copy, and deal with problems as they arise.
All of those functions devolve on the singular oral historian, who from necessity acts as interviewer, camera operator, and paperwork handler—but more help assures better quality control.21
The better the quality of the equipment, the better the video interview. The initial consumer video recorders were not appropriate for long-term preservation and use in exhibits or documentaries, which required professional-quality cameras and studio videos. Digital video has been easier to use, reproduce, and edit. Digital video also offers greater resolution than previous video camcorders.22
Cameras are only as good as their lenses. Use a lens wide enough for video recording in close quarters. Good sound quality requires external microphones. Cameras’ built-in sound capabilities may add objectionable noise to the recording. If the camera has an external microphone input, a boom mike will provide good quality sound recordings without intruding on the picture. Wired lapel mikes pinned unobtrusively on a lapel or scarf will eliminate most background noise but also limit the interviewee’s freedom to move around. Wireless microphones allow more movement but are more prone to radio frequency interference. Purchase microphones that are in a price range compatible with your camera equipment. Quality declines with inexpensive cameras and microphones. Work with reputable dealers, and while taking advantage of whatever discounts are available for equipment, make sure that you understand the warranties and guarantees.23
It is also advisable to audio record the interview separately, making sure that you get both the questioner and the questions. Some of the best videographers have experienced a sinking realization that even though they were monitoring an interview the sound was not being recorded. Synchronizing the audio and video recordings can save the day when one or the other fails. Experts recommend that the best audio to video setup is to provide microphones for both the interviewer and interviewee, connected to a quality recorder. Then connect the audio recorder via the output jack to the camera’s audio input. Any backup audio recording can also be used for transcribing and archival purposes. For group interviews, projects have used condenser microphones to capture all the voices without excessive background noise.24
Digital video technology has been a boon to documentary producers who shoot with only a single camera. Editing interviews creates “jump cuts” that are usually masked by inserting other images between the breaks. “You’ve got to think reverses, b-roll and graphics, something to cut away,” the filmmaker William Gazecki commented. “How are you going to string this together when you’re using bits and pieces later on.” The more seamless the editing, the less distracting it will be for viewers. Digital technology offers filmmakers “all of your postproduction tools at your fingertips in one room.” But while digital technology affords low-cost access to production, Gazecki reminds us “it’s really just a tool. The real meat is in the idea, in the concept.”25
A video oral history must frame and light a picture properly. Poor camera work can make even the most interesting interview dull. If you have gone to the trouble of using the visual medium, you need to be conscious of the picture you are getting. Although oral historians interview to gain information, video offers the observer an array of new insights. The aim is to present the picture so that it does not overwhelm or distract viewers from the substance of the interview but enhances the meaning of what is being said.
Video documentaries are almost always viewed on television-sized screens, and television is still mainly a close-up medium, where head and shoulder shots predominate. In framing the picture, it is important to give the speaker adequate “head room” and “look space.” Balanced head room prevents the head from appearing too close to the top of the frame or sinking below it. Eye room similarly suggests the amount of space from the face to the side of the frame. For variety, if used sparingly, the camera can move in for a close-up that shows the face only from the eyes to the mouth. Viewers mentally complete the picture. The video specialist David Mould also notes that “the human body has certain natural divisions—at the neck, at the waist, at the knees,” and he warns against framing an interview so that the bottom of the pictures breaks at one of these divisions.26
The way a subject is framed can constitute a subtle form of editorializing. The popular television news show 60 Minutes frequently shoots its interviewees in extreme close-up, cutting the tops of their heads from the picture and focusing on their eyes. By contrast, when the camera turns to the program’s own interviewers, it pulls back to give them full head and shoulders and “lots of visual breathing space.”27 Shooting below or above the interviewee also distorts the picture. A more neutral picture of the speaker is taken at eye level, so that the viewer sees the speaker at the same level.
Interviewees should sit at a slight angle to the camera and talk to the interviewer rather than to the camera. When filming in someone’s home, you might have to move some of the items from behind where the interviewee will sit. The background should be relatively uncluttered to avoid diverting viewers’ attention. Interviewers should dress appropriately for the particular interview and should avoid wearing unusually patterned clothing that would clash with the backdrop. Some projects tighten the frame from the shoulders up to minimize such distractions. Always use a tripod to keep the picture steady. The best tripods have a fluid head for ease and smoothness of movement.
Camera angles differ when taping a group. Video oral histories have experimented with many different arrangements for interviewers and interviewees. A particularly successful arrangement is to place the interviewer, back to the camera, in the open end of a V-shaped table at which the interviewees are sitting. The interviewer can maintain eye contact with whoever is speaker, just as the camera can focus easily on the speakers, either individually or in groups28
Keep in mind the time needed to set up and take down equipment before and after an interview. Veteran documentary makers urged video historians to add “pad time” to their shooting schedule. You should not expect to begin taping for at least an hour after arriving at a location. Leave time also after the interview to video photographs, maps, and memorabilia.29
Zoom lenses change the picture composition to create more diverse and interesting visual effects: to produce close-ups or perhaps to capture an artifact of a speaker’s expressive hands. But video specialists cringe at “unmotivated” zooming and recommend that the zoom in or zoom out take place during the question rather than during the answer. Documentary makers inevitably edit the interviews for their particular needs, cutting out false starts, phrases, and whole sentences and paragraphs; they prefer a standard camera angle and position and head size because the speaker’s head remains a uniform size. They aim to produce a seamless product that appears “as if nobody did anything.” Ideally, viewers should not be aware of editing techniques. Documentary makers may also favor some variety in shots, however, and suggest that at least two standard framings be used. Video historians must consider all the possible uses of their product and proceed accordingly.30
The chief focus should be on the interviewee. The interviewer’s questions shape the dialogue, but the reason for doing interviews is to hear what interviewees have to say and, on video, to watch them say it. When the budget covers the use of only one camera, as is most often the case, focus on the interviewee during the interview. If necessary, the interviewer can be filmed asking questions and reacting (that is, listening quietly) after the interview is over. Television news broadcasts have long employed this technique, which is a pivotal point in the movie Broadcast News. As in the motion picture, staged “reaction” shots raise ethical issues and should be handled very carefully.
Some oral historians object strongly to taping only the interviewee. Noting the collaborative nature of an interview, they ask, why video only one party to it? “The integrity of the document may be compromised if only half of the interview ‘team’ is photographed and recorded,” wrote Thomas L. Charlton from the Baylor University Institute for Oral History. He prefers using two cameras: one to focus exclusively on the interviewee, the second to focus alternately on the interviewer and on group shots containing both the interviewer and interviewee. Some video oral historians have also used a split-screen technique. Multiple cameras are easier to use in a studio than on location.31
Just as with an audio interview, video oral histories require some basic data for research use. At a minimum, documentation should include the date of the interview; the names of the interviewee and interviewer; a summary statement on the interviewee and the subjects covered; whether there are transcripts of the interview; whether the recording is audio or visual; the running time or length of the interview; any restrictions on the use of the material; and the additional locations where backup copies have been stored.
Federal law specifies that any tangible recording of a person’s words is protected by copyright. Interviewees retain ownership of their words until they sign a deed of gift, contract, or release form, which usually transfer intellectual property rights on the interview from the interviewee to the sponsoring institution or documentary maker. Video release forms can be the same as those for audio oral history, with one difference: the use of an interviewee’s face as well as voice in a documentary can be unsettling if unexpected, so some video releases include a statement that the interviewee has been notified of the uses to which the material will be put.32
As with sound recordings, archives face the problem of new technology making their older equipment obsolete. Some video interviews were recorded in formats for which archives have no playback equipment. The recordings have to be converted or they are not usable.
Each time a videotape was played the picture quality decreased, so a master video recording was required for preservation. “Dubbing masters” were used to make copies for showing and editing. Archivists preferred “larger, thicker, wider tape” for recording, reproduction, and preservation, but such high-quality recording required cumbersome equipment and considerably higher costs. Then manufacturers increasingly abandoned the one-inch and three-quarter inch videotape that archivists preferred in favor of Betacam and digital formats.33
Digital video systems offer easier recording and editing. Audio and visual recordings are converted into data and can be handled the same as any other electronic data. Computer software programs facilitate online editing of both audio and video, and the product can be transmitted electronically and stored on archival-quality compact discs (CDs) and high-density videodiscs (DVDs). Digital audio and visual recordings can also be copied with little loss of sound and picture quality (unless the signal has been compressed in order to save file space).34
Archivists complain about receiving messy electronic files. They urge donors to clean up all video recordings before depositing them. One “archival train wreck” included ten minutes of footage of a potted plant since the camera had been left running after the interview had finished. Given the expense of preserving video, unnecessary material simply wastes an archives’ resources.
Paradoxically, high-resolution digital video is both inexpensive to record and expensive to preserve, because the files are so enormous and take up so much space on a server. Doug Boyd, an authority on digital oral equipment, has warned against a “blind commitment to video technology” that could drive an archives “into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.” Digital technology has changed rapidly, making state-of-art equipment obsolete before long, and questions remain about DVDs as a long-term preservation medium. “Patiently waiting for a technology to mature does not make you a Luddite,” Boyd advises. “It makes you technologically responsible.”35
The decay of videotape, the fading of color photographs, and the disintegration of highly acidic paper has create the ironic situation, one photographic specialist noted, “that we’re becoming the most fully-documented people in the history of the species, yet ours is the epoch most likely to vanish from the record.”36
Even stored under optimal conditions, the life span of home videotape was estimated at about fifteen years. Archivists and museum curators who have accessioned older government videos to their collections have opened a cassette only to find a ribbon of clear acetate and a pile of brown powder. According to one report, “the oxide was dropping off videotape like so much dandruff.” Heat and moisture made the tape deteriorate all the quicker.
Video archives should preserve their videotapes digitally before the images deteriorate. Every copy made from the digital master is the second generation—that is, as good as the first copy of the original.
Digitizing old tapes is an opportunity to physically evaluate the recordings and create an inventory of the collection, including file size, format, resolution, means of storage (on a computer server or flash drive), and the location of all the backup copies. This information will facilitate future media migration.37
Those archives that have compiled substantial video oral history collections report that user expectations are growing, placing new burdens on them not only for preservation but also for improving access to their video archives. That television and documentary producers tend to demand material in a rush can be an aggravation for an archivist, but more troublesome are the questions about how the material will be used. With large collections, an archives cannot consult with each interviewee about the use of their interviews beyond whatever the interviewee specified in the deed of gift. Still, it can be disconcerting for interviewees to see themselves unexpectedly in a broadcast.
Archives must explain the copyright provisions for their videos and should obtain some written confirmation from the producers concerning their intended use of the material. The Smithsonian Archives, for example, initially makes recordings available in formats that discourage its use for broadcasting. Broadcasters and documentary makers view the video and determine what portions they want, then formally apply for a high-resolution copy.
Like audio interviews, videos may be sealed or otherwise restricted by interviewees for a period of time. In at least one instance, a videoed interview was requested for use in a court proceeding—although not subpoenaed—and the interviewee agreed to its use in court.
As mentioned, as a tiny segment of the marketplace for recording equipment, oral historians and archivists must make do with what is produced and available, hoping that the technology they invest in will not be replaced too soon. Like audio recording, the safest path is to “follow the music.” Whatever form of technology produces popular music videos, movies, and other recordings, will likely prevail the longest. Interviews can be recorded on flash-based memory drives, and then migrate to a portable hard drive or computer server for processing and preservation. One high-resolution video can fill a single hard drive, but compressed video can save storage space and still provide broadcast-quality copies.
Be sure that you have the necessary software to play back recordings and to move them to the next generation of technology—but also be aware of the costs involved with using proprietary software. To be safe, make duplicate copies, store them at different locations, and keep a record of where they are deposited.38
Digital indexes, especially if they include video, differ from the traditional card catalogs and back-of-the-book indexes. To meet user needs, projects create a database that combines audio and video recordings, transcripts, photographs, and other documentation. Some indexes have highlighted major issues and themes discussed within the interviews. Some have time-coded the videos and abstracted them in several-minute intervals that correspond to the transcripts, if they exist. Some projects have augmented their own indexing with user-generated tags, drawing on researchers’ proven interests.
The more that video oral histories have been broadcast as television documentaries or posted online, the more users want access, notes Doug Boyd, director of the oral history center at the University of Kentucky. Users demand “access to archival materials of all kinds from their computer, while at home, in an airport, or sitting in Starbucks.” To meet these needs, his program developed a customized collection-management database with powerful search capabilities. Creating a customized database is expensive and time-consuming, however. Another option is for projects to use the services of commercial platforms.39
Randforce Associates at the University of Buffalo has pioneered in creative digital indexing. They have developed indexed and annotated databases for oral history collections, using thematic coding to “support the locating, sorting, gathering, display, and export of passages across the collection.” In working with History Makers Inc., a Chicago-based project documenting African American life, Randforce coded the collection first by a series of historical topics related to African Americans, then to the biographical dimensions of personal experience, and finally flagged personal stories as examples of specific themes, an approach that combines historical context with oral history documentation.40
The bigger the collection, the more indexing is necessary to serve as a road map for researchers. Between 1994 and 1999, the Shoah Foundation did video interviews of 52,000 Holocaust survivors, amassing 105,000 hours of testimony on their experiences before, during, and after World War II. To help users navigate this immense collection, the Shoah Foundation developed a data management indexing system that aimed for objectivity by concentrating on the most definable topics discussed at length in the testimonies. This system worked best when dealing with common themes leading up to and during the war: encounters with European anti-Semitism, forced relocation, and incarceration.
The indexing worked less well with the interviewees’ postwar experiences, which were worldwide and cut across political and social spheres; they did not revolve around a single event as dramatic as the Holocaust. Since researchers were frustrated by the under-indexing of postwar experiences, Max Baumgarten volunteered to watch a set of videos from Los Angeles, transcribe them, and construct an indexing system that revolved around frequently referenced categories. Instead of building the testimony around dramatic events, he turned all the content into index terms and entered the information into a spreadsheet for organization. “By reading against the grain and exploring the testimonies in intimate and untraditional ways, I was able to familiarize myself with the nuances and subtleties” of the postwar years, he reported. This exercise served as a reminder of the intellectual challenges of indexing and the time and effort required to make it effective.41
Researchers still prefer transcripts, which can be skimmed and photocopied, but when they turn to the recordings they often learn more than they would from an audio interview. By viewing a film or video, noted one video specialist, the researcher not only hears voice inflections but sees raised eyebrows, hand motions, and body language, “everything, in short, from clothing to reaction gestures and mannerisms.” Gestures combined with words sometimes convey very different meanings.42
Some researchers have used the video camera themselves to gather material and information for their work. David Seaman recorded artists in the process of creating. While interviewing West Virginian artist Ruth Rodgers, Seaman showed her meditative process: sitting and visualizing what she wanted to put on the canvas. Then, as she painted, he crawled on the floor and reproduced what she had seen in her meditative state. Seaman found that people who communicated in the visual arts—painting, photography, and sculpting—also communicated well in words and provided articulate running narratives for his videos.43
The Regional Oral History Office at Berkeley has engaged a “digital videography” that mixes artists narrating their own lives together with images of them in their work space and samples of their work. “Living History/Performing Narratives” began with an oral history, done in collaboration with the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, of a conceptual artist, David Ireland, who turned his entire house into a “developing art performance.” The use of video allowed for critical examination of the ways in which artists’ life stories and artistic creations intersect.
Network collection and preservation of video has been less extensive, and more recently initiated, than is generally assumed. Nations with publicly owned television networks took the lead in depositing their film and video at their national archives. The Canadian Broadcasting Company’s collection at the Canadian National Film, Television, and Sound Archives in Ottawa provides an outstanding example. By contrast, the privately owned American networks went for decades blithely unconcerned about preserving their film and video heritage and either discarded film or routinely erased and recorded over videotape. Universities made the first effort to save broadcast materials; in 1968 the Vanderbilt Television News Archives, for instance, began collecting an extensive backlog of television news programming. The National Museum of Broadcasting in New York has also begun preserving and exhibiting old television programs and news broadcasts. Purdue University houses the C-SPAN archives, and the University of Maryland is home to the National Public Radio and Television Archives.
Much video remains uncollected, however, especially interview segments (or outtakes) that were not used in documentaries or broadcast on the news. In Hawaii, a video producer’s “sheer frustration” in seeking resource material led to the creation of the Film and Video Archive Project. Producer Chris Conybeare realized that as soon as a television documentary is finished and goes on the air, its producers go on to other projects, rarely stopping to think that although they used only three minutes from an interview, the “other twenty-five minutes they didn’t use might be very interesting, historically, to people who are scholars, or even just the general public who has a curiosity about history or culture.” Those working on the Film and Video Archive Project also realized that because the shelf life of videotape was so short, these outtakes, without proper maintenance, might be entirely lost within a few years.44
Supported financially by Hawaii’s public broadcast channel and its state legislature, the Film and Video Archive Project began by compiling an inventory of the condition of videoed interviews in the state. The archive also has encouraged groups applying for funding to produce video documentaries to make provisions to archive all of their interviews. Since documentary makers usually operate on budget tight on both time and funds, stopping to preserve the material they do not use in their finished documentaries can be an expensive nuisance. They are more likely to comply with this provision if they have built preservation into their budgets and scheduling from the start. Doing archival work as an afterthought, when the documentary has been completed and shown and new projects are beckoning, is not nearly as successful.45
Other oral history archives with extensive audio interview holdings began and continue to collect video interviews and outtakes from producers in their region. The University of Kentucky, for instance, has received the interviews done for documentaries such as Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) and Long Road Back: Vietnam Remembered (1985). The deposited recordings and transcripts are available for others to research.46
A video oral history in itself is not a documentary. Few people would want to watch the many hours of video necessary to conduct a life review oral history. Instead, the video interview is source material for documentaries, exhibits, and Internet postings. One oral history project included thirty hours of video interviews, of which twenty-five minutes appeared in the seventy-eight-minute documentary. But even this product was cut down to “a television hour,” or fifty-six minutes, requiring further reductions in the interviews shown. In another project, fifty hours of interviews were condensed into a one-hour program. In any documentary film or video project, an interviewee who speaks for an hour on video usually appears for only a few minutes, or even a few seconds, in the final product.47
Video interviews are more than just another source, however, they have profoundly influenced the nature of documentaries. Older documentaries relied heavily on newsreels and television film. “The producer usually centered on some sort of theme like The Roaring Twenties of The Depression Thirties,” noted the pioneer oral historian Dean Albertson. “A snappy narrative against a background of contemporaneous pop music would be provided, and voilà, a history film.” Documentary productions have drawn increasingly on oral histories, and the availability of interviews from particular times and places have shaped the subject and focus of their projects. The old-style documentary showed newsreel clips of women working in a World War II airplane factory, with an omniscient voice-over narrative explaining how women went to work during the war. But The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter quoted the women themselves, reflecting on their own experiences, talking decades after the war.48
Oral histories have helped documentaries become more intimate, more compelling, and more complex. Projects such as Vietnam: A Television History (1984) and Eyes on the Prize (1986 and 1990) appeared on national television and have been far more widely used as educational tools in schools. The textile strike that swept through southern cotton mills in 1934 had been the subject of books and dissertations but reached a much wider audience—including current and former textile workers—in a televised documentary The Uprising of ‘34 (1995). From the Earth: The Pioneers of Lander County (1996) drew on the stories of the diverse community of immigrants who settled in the isolated mining and ranching region of northern Nevada during the twentieth century. Stranger with a Camera (2000) investigated the death of a Canadian documentary filmmaker in Appalachia from the multiple perspectives of both the film crew and the community. Enemies of the People (2009) conducted interviews with former Khmer Rouge leaders in an effort to understand their complicity in the Killing Fields of Cambodia.
Before the oral history-based video documentary Living the Story: The Civil Rights Movement in Kentucky (2002) was completed, project staff conducted focus groups with potential viewers; they expressed a strong preference for hearing stories and getting to know the characters, rather than having a narrator tell them what to think. Although the project had conducted 175 interviews with Kentuckians who had been civil rights activists, the documentary makers responded to the focus groups by selecting only fifteen of the interviewees to make recurring appearances throughout the program and let them provide the narration. When Living the Story aired on Kentucky Educational Television, the producers also organized “viewing parties” that met at community centers around the state to watch the program and then discuss its meaning and the historical events it covered.49
Video interviewing requires making choices as to whom to interview. Turning video interviews into a documentary requires further choices as the documentary maker selects material from the interviews. The editing of the interviews also reveals how much documentary makers value the video interviewees as interpreters of their own experiences who can provide anecdotes about people and pivotal moments and help re-create the drama of a moment. By minimizing the role of the narrator and allowing interviewees to speak for themselves, some documentaries have carried the message that only those who “were there” are allowed to speak for history. In reviewing the popular documentary series Vietnam: A Television History, Michael Frisch complained, “It is as if students of the Pentagon Papers or journalists or historians, over the years, have not learned more about these events than immediate participants can possibly have experienced, much less remembered and willingly discussed, and as if we had not, in the process, arrived at alternative ways of understanding these events.”50
Academics also have been troubled that documentaries do not fit the generally accepted notions of scholarship. Films and videos had no footnotes or bibliographies, and rarely explained their methodologies for determining what was included and what was left out of the final film. They offered little means of verification or corroboration to written sources. “Perhaps this is one of the reasons why a scholarly book or article seldom if ever cites a video documentary as its source,” noted Richard Sweterlitch, an academic who has produced video oral histories. “We simply don’t trust productions which lack the critical apparati of scholarship.”51
To meet such criticism, documentary makers turned to the Internet, establishing interactive websites in conjunction with the documentaries. Generally designed for education purposes, these sites contain supplementary background material, additional interview segments, suggestions for further reading, and links to related sources, often to the full text of interviews. For instance, a documentary on The Clinton Years (2001), jointly produced by ABC’s Nightline and PBS’s Frontline drew on interviews with twenty White House staffers, advisors, and cabinet members. The program’s website contained not only the text of each episode but also the transcript of each interview.52
Documentary makers now have a wide selection of movie-making software that enable them to fade, zoom, and pan across still pictures, and to add text and audio clips from oral histories. Experienced video producers encourage new practitioners to take the time to learn these programs to become comfortable with them or find someone who can assist.
When they deal with historical subjects, documentary makers are usually dependent on what is already on film, both interviews and stock footage of the past events the interviews describe. They operate under time constraints and do not usually have the opportunity to examine your entire collection. They need guidance in identifying the portions of the collection most relevant to their topic and any supporting materials—the more visual the better. Who were the central figures? Who provided the most compelling accounts? Who offered contradictory opinions? They may also want contact information for still-living interviewees to make additional recordings. They will need to know what legal releases govern your collection. In short, the needs of documentary filmmakers are not unlike those of other researchers, except that their time and needs are usually more pressing.
Being a visual medium, video makes the picture a primary consideration, a priority that can frustrate those more concerned with the information an interview generates. It is a common complaint among television journalists. The veteran television reporter Daniel Schorr commented that whenever he offered a story, his producer would ask, “What do we see?” Dramatic pictures can blow a story entirely out of proportion on television. The evening news opens with picture of a dramatic rescue from a burning building, while the next morning’s newspaper relegates the same story to a paragraph or two buried deep in its pages. On Capitol Hill, television commentators have complained that they could get better coverage for senators and representatives if they could get them to ride around in fire engines.53
At an Oral History Association meeting, the prolific documentary maker Ken Burns discussed the ethical problems of using illustrations to tell a story even if they were not always accurate. Burns once decided to use a photo of Huey Long surrounded by uniformed police to illustrate a voice-over explaining that Long traveled with armed bodyguards because he feared for his life. Long’s guards dressed in street clothes rather than uniforms, but a photo of plainclothesmen would not have made much of a visual point. Burns selected an untypical picture because it told the story better. To justify his decision, he related the practice of a football coach who would ask an injured player what time it was. If the player could not answer correctly, he would be sent to the hospital for observation—unless the coach really needed the player, in which case he would tell him the time and send him back into the game. If an illustration is really needed, Burns advised, use it. Just be careful, he cautioned, not to make cutting such corners an automatic practice.
The video interview presents an unvarnished look at the interviewee; a documentary doctors both the audio and visual to produce a more polished product. The practice of some documentary makers of not always distinguishing between generic and specifically identified photographs raises questions about the integrity of the process. By using illustrations that make the point that the speaker is discussing, but show someone other than the speaker, a video misleads viewers into thinking that they are looking at historical photos and film of the speaker. Documentary makers may choose to leave in a statement that, though they know it to be slightly erroneous, is told colorfully by an important source. They may coach an interviewee to repeat a line, over and over, until they hear it just the way they want it. Even more troublesome is the technological advance in video editing that allows documentary makers to trim and rearrange a speaker’s words without the audience being aware that it is not hearing the remarks strictly as spoken. Digital imaging similarly permits editors to alter elements of the picture. Careless or devious editing can make speakers seem to say exactly the opposite of what they intended.54
Oral historians’ control depends on their role in making the documentary, particularly on whether they were producers or consultants. “Consultants are at a disadvantage; they only consult,” observed E. John B. Allen, who did interviews and consulted on a documentary on skiing. “The director and cameraman work full time on the film. As the cutting, editing, i.e., the finalizing of the film takes places, it enters on a life of its own.” The oral historian as consultant may find that advice previously taken is discarded in the editing process, that misleading, historically inaccurate film footage has been used because of its visual impact, and that the final product does not correspond to the consultant’s personal and professional standards.55
Historians who have worked as consultants for documentaries are often appalled at the filmmaker’s blatant manipulation of people’s words and disregard for facts in order to create a more visually exciting product. Documentary makers are eager to attract and appeal to large audiences. They seek to be enlightening and educational, but also entertaining and provocative. Recognizing these dual and conflicting needs, the American Historical Association has promoted standards that encourage historians to “be sensitive to the artistic and dramatic rights of film and video collaborators and seek solutions that respect both historical and artistic-dramatic concerns.”56
Museums quickly embraced video oral histories as a means of presenting information in a visually appealing manner. As collectors of objects, museums are always seeking ways of placing them in context and showing how people used them. Oral history reconstructs the context, but audio alone rarely goes into great deal about objects and the ways they were used. Video interviews, however, can be directed far more toward objects.57
Video also makes speakers more real, providing them with faces and gestures and emotions. The U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, illustrates its message with both audio and visual interviews. In the stark “Voices of the Holocaust” hall, visitors listen to audio interviews of a series of survivors telling their stories. The disembodied voices have a haunting quality. Later, in a small amphitheater, visitors watched videoed interviews with concentration-camp prisoners recounting their experiences. A woman recalls sharing her soup with a friend; a man weeps as he remembers talking with his father in the camp barracks; another former prisoner describes a guard with a bulldog-like demeanor who saved her life. Their faces—some stoic, some wretched with emotion, some solemn but occasionally smiling—complement the words and capture the audience. Viewers gather in larger numbers and tend to stay longer for the video than the audio presentations. A less emotional topic might need more artistic staging, but tears welling in a speaker’s eyes make the point vividly.
Interviews conducted for the Mashapaug Project—an urban pollution study in Providence, Rhode Island—created a “Reservoir of Memories” exhibit and website. Recordings and other materials collected were organized into a “toxic tour,” where museum visitors board a stationary bus to take a virtual tour of the Mashaupaug Pond, narrated by the oral histories.58
At the Boott Cotton Mills Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, the National Park Service set up a self-guided tour of the factory with an emphasis on realism. At the shop-floor level, the machinery and other artifacts and authentic background noise help visitors “hear, smell, and feel” what workers experienced. Upstairs, in a more traditional museum setting—an exhibit on the broad history of weaving—video monitors present the testimony of retired spinners and weavers about their relations with other workers, salaries, and working conditions. One reviewer noted that “seeing and hearing the interviews of individuals such as Valentine Chartrand, a spinner who witnessed the fatal accident of a co-worker, and Victor Sherbon, who talked about the death of the mill, elicit emotional responses that no label or artifact could match.”59
Depending on the subject matter, and the quality of the narrators, video interviews can make fascinating exhibits, even if they contain just head-and-shoulder images. Exhibits usually feature short clips from longer interviews, revolving around a colorful story or an emotional moment. The video does not need to be limited to a standard shot of the interviewee talking just past the camera. The interview audio can be used as voice-overs for additional film of them at work, at home, or at some relevant and visually intriguing location. Designers can create engaging video experiences using audio while showing a collage of still and film images, making the exhibit interactive and multidimensional.
While videos attract visitors’ attention, museum curators have observed that they do not hold interest for long. One survey calculated that the average time visitors spent at any video was a little over two minutes, until something else caught their eye and they moved on. Realistically, therefore, clips should be vivid and concise highlights of the interviews.60
Oral history projects increasingly post their recordings and transcripts on websites, where the video interviews draw the most attention. This is when the distinction between high-quality professional videography and amateur productions that were conducted in poorly controlled environments with inadequate lighting become most obvious. Archives often acquire poorly conducted videos that are difficult to watch.61
When deciding what to post, ask: Who is the audience? Family members and researchers who might want to watch the entire interview probably constitute just a small percentage of the users. Most viewers will be satisfied with highlights. Instead of posting full reference material therefore, projects often rely on edited clips, a few minutes in duration, that have been excerpted from hours of interviews. These can serve as promotion for the larger archives. Class projects have used “video bulletin boards” to allow students to upload and download interview clips and exchange messages about them. Various social media also provide outlets for sharing video interviews.
Older projects have to determine whether deeds of gift signed in the pre-Internet era are flexible enough to authorize putting them online. More recent oral histories are being collected specifically with the goal of creating an online archive, which both informs the interviewees and helps improve and standardize quality as the projects train interviewers to meet this objective. The Densho Digital Archive, which interviewed Japanese Americans who had been interned during World War II, sought to balance protecting its interviewees while still reaching a large audience on the Internet. It posted excerpts from some, but not all, of its interviews on YouTube as well as its own website. Projects have also turned to social media both to advertise and disseminate their interviews.62
The goal of creating a website is to make it equally attractive and usable. It should provide well-illustrated and interesting material that can be navigated easily and downloaded quickly. For management purposes, an online archives that welcomes submissions should set file-size limitations for high-definition images and require data on the interviewer, the interviewee, the subject matter, and the legal releases.63
The video oral historian Brien Williams has commented that even the most poorly produced and wretchedly preserved video of Abraham Lincoln would still have enormous value. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. concurred:
I think if we had videotaped interviews with Emerson, Socrates, Charlemagne, it would be marvelous. On the other hand, videotaping compounds all the problems of expense, storage, dilapidation, and so on. Obviously it would have to be used selectively. But, for commanding figures, particularly those who haven’t been amply documented on television, it would be particularly useful. Eric Sevareid’s interviewing of Walter Lippmann, for example, would be invaluable to historians a hundred years from now wondering what Lippmann was like. But only an unusual case would justify the expense. There are not that many Walter Lippmanns.64
Some video historians envision a time when all oral history will be videoed. But many barriers remain to universal videotaping. Because the oral historian cannot always control the location of an interview, audio recording on-site, rather than videotaping, will continue to be the logical choice sometimes, especially when interviewees for whatever reasons of privacy or vanity refuse to have their pictures taken. But if the opportunities are available, the funds are forthcoming, and the subjects are willing, then future researchers and users of oral history may ask why we failed to capture the historical picture as well as the words.65