Conducting an interview can be a very nerve-racking and scary experience. You have a big responsibility to conduct a successful interview and to ensure that you receive the best response, for example, asking appropriate questions. Interviewing can be very difficult to get right, particularly if you have a subject quite unwilling to open up. Without some professionalism, a little engagement and the ability to set your subject at ease, then your interview might not go as well as anticipated. In this blog, I have summarised a few tips that I discovered in a how to conduct an interview video blog, which was created by a video production company.
A simple question often helps the subject to relax. You don't have to use it in the final edit, but the most important thing to come from this, is ease throughout the interview. Even if they get the question wrong then it means that you can all have a laugh and a joke about it, in general just creating a more comfortable environment so that the interview can benefit as a whole. As well as this, it is important to let the subject go through their stuff a couple of times, to allow them to warm up. Then from the point of view of the camera operator it is always worth shooting more than one run so that there is enough material to go through.
The set-up of the interview is a basic yet major matter to remember. It's recommended that you have someone sat next to the camera, either from your team or, preferably someone the subject knows, asking a few questions so that the subject isn't having to deal with the pressure of looking directly at the camera. It also means that they do not need to freak out speaking to the camera, talking to another person is much less difficult. By doing this they are able to also imagine that they are having an casual question and answer session rather than an interview, also making it easier for the subject to keep eye contact with the interviewer.
By keeping answers short and in context, this allows much more flexibility and ease in putting it all together when it comes to the final edit. In particular if you have got more than one camera rolling. When I say 'in context', I mean getting the subject to use company names rather than 'we' and perhaps even asking them to begin an answer with the question - that is if you don't want your own interviewing voice incorporated in the video - that way it is always clear what's being discussed about.
Carrying out an interview is never going to be an easy task, there is a lot of expectation that comes with it, but I have outlined a number of very helpful suggestions to hopefully make the process easier, in my personal opinion I think making sure the subject being interviewed is relaxed and comfortable is perhaps the most important. Just because this is a feature which will effect the whole environment and the feeling of the interview throughout, making the interviewers job much harder.
A simple question often helps the subject to relax. You don't have to use it in the final edit, but the most important thing to come from this, is ease throughout the interview. Even if they get the question wrong then it means that you can all have a laugh and a joke about it, in general just creating a more comfortable environment so that the interview can benefit as a whole. As well as this, it is important to let the subject go through their stuff a couple of times, to allow them to warm up. Then from the point of view of the camera operator it is always worth shooting more than one run so that there is enough material to go through.
The set-up of the interview is a basic yet major matter to remember. It's recommended that you have someone sat next to the camera, either from your team or, preferably someone the subject knows, asking a few questions so that the subject isn't having to deal with the pressure of looking directly at the camera. It also means that they do not need to freak out speaking to the camera, talking to another person is much less difficult. By doing this they are able to also imagine that they are having an casual question and answer session rather than an interview, also making it easier for the subject to keep eye contact with the interviewer.
By keeping answers short and in context, this allows much more flexibility and ease in putting it all together when it comes to the final edit. In particular if you have got more than one camera rolling. When I say 'in context', I mean getting the subject to use company names rather than 'we' and perhaps even asking them to begin an answer with the question - that is if you don't want your own interviewing voice incorporated in the video - that way it is always clear what's being discussed about.
Carrying out an interview is never going to be an easy task, there is a lot of expectation that comes with it, but I have outlined a number of very helpful suggestions to hopefully make the process easier, in my personal opinion I think making sure the subject being interviewed is relaxed and comfortable is perhaps the most important. Just because this is a feature which will effect the whole environment and the feeling of the interview throughout, making the interviewers job much harder.
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If you want to find out more about how to conduct a video then make sure you check out the video, it was created by Lambda Films, a video production Norwich company.
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