One thing that I have been thinking about is that a documentary like this may have problems when it comes to interviewing people on complex subjects like existence, one’s place in humanity, a purpose to life, and other extensively-unanswerable questions.
One question that I thought would be great to ask and was an early thought bubble in this project, “What do you do with your life once you think you know what the meaning of life is?”
The problem is that very few people will be able to respond to this. Instead I think that interviews should start basic and “chip away” at the surface to get down to people philosophical cores. This also must include what is NOT important as well as what IS important.
A more appropriate line of questioning might start with much more topical information like, “how much time do you spend thinking about your existence?”, “What is your favorite thing to thing about”? “What are you scared of?”, “What aren’t you scared of?”, “What is the most important thing you live your life by?”, etc.
I have a feeling that many of the questions that are important to me are basically irrelevant to many others. Sure there will common threads (I mean we’re all human, right?) but I think we should put a lot of thought into developing a dynamic way of interviewing. I’m guessing we will find what people DON’T think about just as interesting as what they DO think about.
Well, what would the goal of the film be? Just gathering peoples thoughts or… whats the purpose, basically?