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What are UFO's: The Boy'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:
Boys Brigade
   The Boys Brigade is a uniformed organisation that is made up of 4 sections:

  • Anchor boys (5-8 years old)
  • Junior (8-11 yrs)
  • Company (11-15 yrs)
  • Senior (15-18 yrs)
To cover a more diverse range of children, the team decided to interview boys from the junior and company sections, along with two senior members. The boys seemed quite happy to be interviewed, though some were shyer than others.

Since aliens and space is seen as a 'boys subject' it was thought that these kids would have much wilder and more imaginative ideas than the girls that had been interviewed. However, this wasn't quite the case.


 The boys were interviewed in pairs in the hope that this would allow them to bounce ideas off each other and draw the audience in further, as sometimes putting a kind of relationship on screen (such as friendship) can captivate the viewer more than one individual would be able to.

 The interviews took place with an adult volunteer present. The process was simple:

  1. Ask the boys if they knew why they were being interviewed and what the interview was about.
  2. Explain the film to them; what's included, how it will be put together etc.
  3. Have a small chat whilst the camera's being set up.
  4. Start the interview.
If an interviewer stands up and is above the interviewee's eyesight, then a sense of intimidation is instilled. So for the younger boys (ages 8-14), the interviewer sat on the floor at the side of the camera so that they were level to, or below, the boy's eyesight. 

The questions were asked one by one and the boys were given time to think before giving their answers. Some talked to each other and the team to explore their ideas further.

The most common ideas from the boys were that:
  • Aliens came from really, really far away
  • They eat metal or planets
  • The boys would take them to play laser tag, or to Nando's
There was a large age gap between the youngest boys (8) and the eldest (aged 18). In this case, the younger boys were more imaginative whereas the older ones seemed to reply more on logic and scientific facts and conspiracy theories.
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