Reaching out to your subject. So you already have in mind you already who you're going to be interviewing who you're going to be doing the documentary about. You have their contact, and now you're ready to contact them. That can be through Facebook, that can be through email, or Instagram. Either way, doesn't matter, the approach is the same. So what I normally do is I do not write long emails, I just write a quick note.

And I say, Hi, my name is Jay Drago, I'm producer or documentary producer, either way, I'm producer of the series, or I'm a documentary storyteller. And I read about your story in this publication. And I really find your story compelling. And you just have to fill in the blank and see what do you find compelling about this story? Why they their story, and that particular person inspired you to reach out so I record example with a human trafficking I approached shandra. And I said, you know, my name is chu dragos.

I am a producer. And 12 years ago, I did a feature on human trafficking and absolutely passionate passionate about the topic. I come from Bulgaria in former communist country. And human trafficking was extremely usual at that time, years ago when the communist collapse. And I'm really interested in possibly doing a story or possibly telling your story in my next documentary. I'm not sure if I hope that interests you, or you can see, I'm not sure if that would work, but they'll love the opportunity to hop on the phone and talk a little bit, a little bit about it.

Why'd you do that? So, if you know the person, and you're most certain that the person you want to interview that is your subject of your documentary, by all means, just tell them. I would love to do a story on you. I would love to feature in my documentary or be the topic of my documentary either way. Um, however, if someone you don't know, like, I did not know her, and I knew her story is so important. I did not know the depth of the story, but I did not know how to be on camera.

And throughout my experience, I interviewed a lot of people. And I can tell you that sometimes on paper, people are like, have these incredible stories and they're really open, or maybe not open to share, but you read about them and you have this good idea of what What it is about this story that you like, but you play them, you put them in front of a camera, and they just freeze, or they just are not willing to share is just the personality, nothing right or wrong again, it's just something that we are wired differently. So some people are just better when they write or when they talk to a microphone, but not a video camera to report it, but not to someone who's interviewed them on camera. So I would refrain from promising them that you want them for your documentary unless you're 100%. Sure, but you can say, you know, I would really, I am starting to do a documentary on human trafficking, and I'm looking for someone who can be the subject for that documentary.

I'm not sure if that's going to work. But I would love to hop on the call on a quick call and talk about it. Will you be open to do so in the next few days, my schedule is pretty flexible, just let me know. You know, you can make it more conversational. It doesn't have to be anything formal, because sometimes people you know, are taken back. And that's how I approach it.

So when they say, yeah, sure, you know, I'll be open to talk with you. you hop on the call. And while you're on the call, you can just ask them questions and we'll talk about prepping then this is sort of a pre interview, and there's a pre interview for someone that you know, and you're 100% sure, and this pre interview, other sort of overlap overlaps with the person that you are not sure if you want to interview and we'll talk about this in the next video.