The Interrotron

Vernon, Florida was Errol Morris’s second feature length documentary. In it he interviews the residents of the town. In the above clip, which you really have to watch all the way through to understand Morris’s genius, he uses a medium shot and a more or less full shot, a bit wider, and lets the interviewee talk. And talk. It is clear that Morris is close to the camera. In a 2004 interview in FLM magazine Morris said:
“I got tired of sitting so close to the camera. (In my early films, my cameraman would grab the back of my head and pull me back because you could see the side of my head in the lens. When he yanked me back, it often hurt.) And I started to wonder, what if I could become one with the camera. What if the camera and myself could become one and the same?”
Morris says he invented the Interrotron as a way to get his interview subjects to look directly into the camera lens.* (He also says a patent is pending for the device.) They are actually looking at a reflected video image of Morris, much the same as a news reader seems to talk directly to the audience while reading the news text from a teleprompter in front of the camera lens.

Morris sits in front of a similar set-up so he sees the interview subject, which is recorded via video tap if the main camera is shooting film, and another video camera records Morris. He has also claimed that he came up with the idea because it would put his interview subjects at ease. His wife came up with the name, Interrotron, which combined “interview” and “terror.” Morris has said that people will say things to a camera, without anyone else in the room, that they wouldn’t say if another person were present.
Comparing the two styles of shooting interviews, from his early films to his later films, there is clearly a difference in the way the interview subjects relate to the camera and to Morris himself. Below are clips from Fog of War and Gates of Heaven.
In this clip, McNamara does seem to be directing his energy at the camera as a stand-in for Morris.

At 3:07 McNamara tells the story of a debriefing after a bombing raid on Tokyo, during which one bomber pilot lost his wingman. McNamara chokes up as he recounts what Curtis LeMay said to the pilot. Maybe it’s just me, but I still don’t feel as though McNamara is talking to me. I feel as though he is talking to Morris and somehow I can see what Morris sees.
IN this clip from Gates of Heaven, the relationship between the subjects and Morris is much looser.

It is true, of course, that the subjects of the first two documentaries are more whimsical than the later Standard Operating Procedure and Fog of War. It would have been difficult to take the Interrotron set-up on location in the town of Vernon. In fact, it’s not hard to imagine the contraption being more terrorizing than a single camera to the people of Vernon. The interviews for Fog of War and Standard Operating Procedure seem to have been done in a studio setting, which gives them a different feel. Those two films were about events from the past. The earlier films were really more about what was happening in the present, so maybe it made more sense to use the classic interview style, with the director close, but not in, the camera.
In 2001, Morris introduced the Megatron, Son of Interrotron. The new set-up allowed for multiple cameras recording the interviewee, so that Morris could have some flexibility in editing. In the following clip from Standard Operating Procedure, after a few photos from Abu Ghraib, Morris cuts to an interview with Lynndie England which uses several different camera angles, although all of them are in close up. Up to :30.

The Interrotron is not the only device that is being used for the same or similar purposes. EyeDirect is much the same in design, is already patented, and can be bought or rented. EyeDirect sells for about $1,400 minimum – that is the Mark II.
The Interrotron is rentable, and presumably since it is not yet patented, apparently equipment supply houses make their own. The basic set-up really consists of two cameras with teleprompter, connected together. Depending on what cameras are used, the whole rig could cost more than triple what the EyeDirect costs.
Others have rigged their own home-made versions for about $20, using foam core and gaffer’s tape. Interestingly, this guy says he thinks Morris used the Interrotron to make his subjects feel more uncomfortable, not less. In this video he describes how to make one.

* The invention of the Interrotron has sometimes been attributed to Steve Hardie, who has collaborated with Morris on several films and many commercials. But Hardie’s company, White Rabbit Design Company, attributes the device to Morris.