| I've done quite a few video interviews (>120 hours). Notably, I interviewed someone else's dad (a friend's wife) who is dying now. He had a fascinating life being sent out for re-education in Communist China but winding up in a then remote tropical paradise on the Burmese border. The locals were friendly and already effectively organized their villages on a communal basis so he said there was basically little work to do because the land was so fertile and few rules except that local girls were off-limits. Days were spent enjoying the natural environment, eating tropical fruit and BBQ fish and forest meats. One day a troupe of city communists arrived for some reason or other, and he met a lovely girl. When he got the chance he moved back to the city and sought her out, they were married and he was assigned a job as an economic agent, being posted to remote factories around the country to negotiate trading deals to bolster the domestic economy under socialism. In those days few people could travel and he was lucky, despite having to spend most of his time on the road, to be able to travel the whole country and see its character before its modern destruction. I asked him about how the travel was organized, he said every day there was a telex waiting for him at his assigned hotel which would tell him where he was going next. "Catch the #12 bus to West Station, then obtain a fare to Little Black Village, walk east to Factory #12". He said a lot of the travel was by donkey cart and other sort of ad-hoc methods. He was thus surprised every day and could only observe. He seemed genuinely flattered by my interest in his life and included other information in the video. In the end it's always good to have some catch-all open questions like: "Is there anything else you'd like to say to future generations about the changes you have witnessed in your lifetime?" I suppose I should upload it after he dies. Currently I have a copy and the family has a copy. There's a great TV program in Australia where the host interviews randoms literally on the street: https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/front-up |