Mission Strategy

DILONPOC, a division of The South Bay Performing Arts Initiative, seeks to interview and videotape People of Color Notables who have successfully used their skills and talents against the forces of prejudice and intolerance for future study and appreciation.

Building an Archive

Initially, South Bay Performing Arts Initiative will develop the Digital Interview Library from guests who appear on The Urban Roundtable.” The 20 minute interviews will form the foundation of each guest’s library catalog and will be augmented by return visit “interviews” and other memorabilia acquired by the Library Staff or submitted by the guests themselves.

Eventually, the library will grow and require the efforts of hundreds of professional and civic volunteers. Further, guidelines for seeking and selecting potential Interview Candidates will be developed and distributed among a number of Black Colleges recruited to join the program. Then a Preliminary Candidate List will be drawn and reviewed for a final determination of a subject’s inclusion in the Interview Program.

The Digital Interview Library will require innovation and resourcefulness at every turn and will give birth to a variety of new technologies. While it should go without saying that all taped interviews are invaluable and should be preserved for all time, The Library will recruit and hire engineers, programmers, multimedia specialists and information technologists to ensure that the invaluable digitized history will be accessible for review and study around the country, if not the world!

However, The Library’s full social and educational potential will not be realized until future viewers can search and retrieve all of the archived interviews by means of a sophisticated catalogue system.

The Interview

Obviously, the key feature of The Living History Digital Library will be the actual interview! The Library will work with scholars, oral historians, and other experts, to develop a suitable interviewing methodology to enable People of Color contributors to tell their stories in their own unique fashion.

Interviewer Training

Film School students and other Volunteer Filmmakers from every region of the country will be recruited and trained to videotape the interviews. Further, an Interview Manual will provide a 3 to 4 day Training Seminar to outline interview methods, camera positioning and other production guidelines to produce a unified approach to achieving The Living History Digital Library’s mission.

Preparation

Once a candidate has been selected a local Interview Team will visit and help them complete a Pre-Interview Questionnaire to be used in preparing for the eventual taped interview.

The Pre-Interview Questionnaires they will cover during the videotape interview. The answers received from the Pre-Interview Questionnaire will assist the Interview Team in formulating the manner in which to achieve the best possible interview.

The Pre-Interview Questionnaire will be essential in preparing both the interviewer and the candidate to the areas they will cover during the videotape interview. The answers received from the Pre-Interview Questionnaire will assist the Interview Team in formulating the manner in which to achieve the best possible interview

Conducting the Interview

Generally, each taping will provide the individual interview subject an opportunity to speak about their life before, during, and after the events that led to their becoming noteworthy.

Videotaped Interviews will be conducted at a local studio or in the subject’s home. When possible, interview subjects can be offered the opportunity to display photographs, mementos, and to include family members or whomever they feel is relevant to their “story.” More importantly, the Interviewer must never 𠇍ig for the truth.” Instead, the Interviewer should gently guide the notable in achieving a meaningful and moving videotaping.

Technology

The Living History Digital interviews will be videotaped with DV Camcorders suitable for downloading their work product through firewire IE1394 ports. Whether the format is mini-DV or Standard DV, the tapes must be suitable for NLE computerized editing.