In Scarsdale, fifth graders are doing our Capstone project. This is a project that we do at the end of 5th grade. It is a research project where we do a lot of research and then synthesize all the notes to make a Capstone project. One of the most important parts of research is the Interview part; this is the part where we have to find a professional in our topic. So, in my case, an animator or someone who studied animation. I interviewed Chris Chien who is a theme park designer and used to work for Disney. I also interviewed Ben Alpi who is a filmmaker and has made his own films. The reason I interviewed two people is that with two different opinions I could get more information.

Before I could conduct the interview I had to email the person to make sure I could interview him and record the interview once he responded back yes  I needed to write some questions to ask my interviewee. First I asked questions about his life. Here are some questions I asked about his life:

1. Why did you get into animation?

2. Did you study to become an animator?

3. What was the first job you had as an animator and how did that prepare you for your career?

4. What were some of your films? 

After I asked those questions I asked him some questions about animation in general here are some of the questions 

5. What are the different kinds of animation?

6. What are the steps to animating a movie?

7. What happens if one of the steps does not work?

These are some questions about animation in general. After I asked the questions he answered I had gotten some really good answers and information. Some of the answers I got were very useful in my research. For example, for question 5 he gave me many different types of animation and told me how those are achieved in film making.

I faced some challenges in the process of interviewing for example when I got the yes I could interview I had some challenges thinking of questions because what if the person did not know the answer or it took a while to answer but what I realized is I could send my interviewee the questions beforehand so they were prepared when I asked them. 

I think that the Capstone interview is a very important part of Capstone because it gives you information from an expert and the information is the info you cannot get anywhere else. Also, I enjoyed interviewing because it was fun but it will also prepare us for other projects we will do later in our life.