Mike Jones Digital Basin
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The 'dramatic' difference between Men and Women

Recent involvement in a online documentary project has lead me to some interesting generalizations about the difference between Men and Women when it comes to interview technique.

The project explores the experience of migration for south Asian people (Sri-Lanka, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan) to Australia over a number of decades. The interesting observations came in the distinctly different core topics raised interview subjects based on gender and the profound impact this difference had on the 'story' of the interview.

Men spoke first and foremost of their work, of their professions that brought them to Australia - trade, research, work opportunities, business and so on. They spoke about achievements and the process of starting with very little and working up.

By contrast the women spoke very differently. They spoke of family, children, dislocation, loneliness, isolation, difficulty of settling, of concern for their kids being 'different' in the schoolyard. They spoke of difficulty in communicating and of fitting in whilst maintaining identity.

From a cinematic perspective the difference between the two goes beyond just the topics they spoke. The documentary editor's job is to assemble narrative, to build a journey and a 'story' from the interview subjects responses. For the Men it proved incredibly difficult to create drama because what they spoke of - work, profession, business - is inherently un-dramatic because there was no 'conflict', no obstacle, no struggle. The topics they spoke of where fundamentally divorced from the 'human experience'. They were intellectually interesting but not emotively or dramatically engaging.

The Women, by contrast, presented personal experience that was innately dramatic because it had at its core human conflict. The basis of all drama is to make the audience 'worry', if the audience is made to worry then they watch to see the outcome with hope and engagement. All drama works on this simple principle. With the men, whilst their stories were perhaps interesting, there was nothing to 'worry' about because there was nothing at stake, nothing at risk.

With the women, because their stories generally centred on family, children and the experience of dislocating the family from one culture to another, there was immediate and palpable 'worry' and concern.

From the position of editing these interviews into a form that was cohesive and engaging the Women subjects were easy, drama inherent in the events they relayed. The Men were extremely difficult; cohesive was easy because they spoke with logical progression, but drama was near impossible because without conflict, without something to 'worry' about, there is no drama, no reason to watch.

Posted at 12:00AM Nov 29, 2007 by Mike Jones in video  |  Comments[3]