(https://www.flickr.com/photos/irisheyes/5122715574)

Have you ever been cut off by a driver, or been the unwilling “victim” of a rude/mean/patronizing/(fill in the blank) individual and you immediately think, “What an a–hole!”? Most people’s automatic response would be to take it personally and judge the person, rather than to give them the benefit of the doubt–that perhaps the driver just didn’t see them or that the rude/mean/patronizing “a–hole” (ahem) is a just person dealing with a life situation right now.

This is called the Fundamental Attribution Error (or FAE), where we tend to automatically assume that the cause of someone’s behavior is related to their personality rather than their life situation.

So what does this have to do with filmmaking? Patrick Moreau of Stillmotion talks about FAE in his article, “The Most Common Filmmaking Error You’ve Never Heard Of.” He tells us that one of the key ways to tell better stories is to be aware of FAE and of the impact of situations in people’s behaviors. By being more cognizant of the environment we’re creating, say when we’re interviewing people, we can create the kind of environment that people will feel most comfortable in, which in turn would allow us the greatest opportunity to emotionally connect with them.

So how can we create a comfortable environment for our interview subject?

Know your equipment and practice before the interview, so that you can get the technical stuff out of the way and focus instead on actively LISTENING to your interviewee–which means giving them your whole attention and not pretending to listen. That way you can stop asking your subject to repeat themselves, or asking them dumb questions, which they already answered but you didn’t hear, because you weren’t listening. Stop looking at your notes, stop obsessing whether the camera is still recording (which, with the 10-minutes time limits of DSLRs–I can totally understand) and go with the flow.

You want to create a “cocoon” of safety, like in 6:11 to 6:31 of the video below.