Telephone Interview with Liz Allen

On Friday I had the opportunity to conduct my first telephone interview. Over the past few weeks we have put a lot of thought into how our interviewing technique not only effects the tone of the interview but also the clarity of the recording.

For our first set of vox pops I noticed that I often said "yes" and made small noises to encourage the interviewee into thinking that what they were saying was good and just what I wanted. I made a conscious decision to stop doing that during the second vox pop interviews about poetry and there is a huge difference. By nodding as encouragement, instead of talking, I was able to keep the subject talking without affecting the recording.

Yet, I was faced with a new challenge on Friday. Over the telephone Liz could not see my body language and that I was interested in what she was saying. So it was a lot harder to keep the momentum going without the occasional verbal encouragement from me. I really enjoyed doing the interview and feel that it has come out well. Liz talks openly and there is a lot of material in the interview that would be good for a radio package.

Liz Allen is a successful documentary director/producer. She often does observational documentaries that can be very hard hitting and as she mentions sensitive. I love documentaries like this and was really keen to interview her.

Here is the interview in full:




There are a couple of points that Liz talks about that i find interesting. She mentions going out and getting as many salable skills as possible. Learn how to use a camera, set the lighting etc so that you can be attractive to hire. She also says how important it is to get your work out there, get a name for yourself even if its on sites like you tube. It all builds up and will allow the powers that be to be more confident in hiring you.

One of the key points that she often comes back to is the fact that she had something that stood out. She was a nurse before hand and it meant that she was different and it was almost like a 'unique selling point'.

During the interview she mentions John Grierson who was an incredibly influential documentary film maker. I was first introduced to him a few years ago by a friend who was fanatical about early film making and sat me down to watch films like Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein). It was interesting to hear Grierson's name again and so I did some trawling on the internet to see what I could find.

One of the clips that I found is taken from a documentary that Grierson worked on in 1936 called "Night Mail". I had never heard of it before but the words were written by W H Auden and apparently read by Grierson. So to tie up this post here is the clip. Just thought it was a good thing to find as it seems to tie in with
a few things from our lectures recently! Poetry, documentary and my interview with Liz!