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What are UFO's: The Girl's Interview Process

The team decided to interview a range of children between the ages of 7 and 18 upon realising that a diverse choice would provide various answers and give more insight into a child's mind and imagination.

The team went in expecting the younger children to be more imaginative and flamboyant than the older kids. But what happened in the interviews turned out to be something quite different.

Each section was approached in a specific way:

Guides: GirlGuides are a uniformed organisation for girls only, aged 10-14.
   The guides were a little shy at first, but after the introductions were made they were quite happy to sit down with the team and have a chat whilst doing the first activity.

   They enjoyed creating the drawings of various UFO's and aliens, and discussed the topic in depth with their group. This allowed the team to get to know the girls more before the interviews took place.

   Each girl was interviewed individually - which after further thought proved to be a disadvantage as they worked better together. This info was then taken on to the next set of interviews. The girls sat on tables whilst the interviewers stood spaced out a little behind the camera. The Guides were quite quiet and seemed to lean towards scientific fact rather than their imagination.

Rangers: The Rangers are the senior section of GirlGuiding and are aged 14+.
   The Rangers were much more open than the Guides and weren't afraid to voice their opinions. The documentary was briefly explained to them and they were able to run the drawing activity themselves whilst the interviews took place.

   After learning that the interview process would run much more smoothy if they were in pairs, the Rangers put themselves into groups and created their own rota. The girls were sat on chairs whilst the interviewers sat on smaller chairs slightly behind the camera. Many of them had crazy ideas about UFO's and were comfortable being in front of the camera.

Brownies: The Brownies are the second youngest section of GirlGuiding, aged 8-10.
   Knowing that the Brownies were much younger than the Rangers, it was important to put extra strategies in place to put them at ease. Due to the busyness of the evening, the team wasn't able to do any activities with the girls.

   For the interview, a Guider was asked to stay and the interviewers sat on the floor slightly in front of the camera. The Brownies were asked if they knew what they were doing, were told what the documentary was and a simple chat was had before the recorder was pressed so that they could get a feel of how the interview would work.

   Some of the girls were happy to sit and talk, whilst others were extremely quiet. The Brownies interviews were approached in as friendly a manner as possible and everything was done to make sure none of them felt uncomfortable.

To conclude: It is best to do activities with the group as a whole first to allow the filmmakers to integrate and mingle with them, putting both parties at ease with the other.The drawing activity could take place either before or during the interview process, and that the best results come when the girls are interviewed in pairs.
NOTE: Some of the younger girls had never heard of aliens or UFO's.

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