On-camera interviews are the bedrock of every video production. Contributors who are articulate and knowledgeable and who share interesting anecdotes and opinions provide a powerful venue for relaying conceptual information to the audience. When directing an interview, it is imperative that you identify production themes and concepts, build key talking points, and establish a rapport with your talent to record the best sound bites for your production.

Conducting an audio pre-interview helps you build a relationship with the contributor and get pertinent background information. Make sure to ask for permission to record the call, and afterwards, transcribe the conversation to start developing guideline questions for the interview. Build your ideal talking points and prior to the video interview, provide your talent with a list of questions and key issues you will address during the recording.

Tipsheet for Directing Interviews

During the video recording, follow these tips to ensure the comfort and confidence of your contributor:

• Cue the talent to sit upright and smile.
• Turn off camera tally lights and limit talent visibility of monitors.
• Maintain eye contact with the talent and minimize use of notes.
• Focus on each question and listen critically to the response.
• Save your most important questions for the middle of the interview.
• Ask for concrete stories and examples to help turn abstracts into reality.
• Avoid making affirming comments or overt gestures during the talent’s response.
• After you have recorded core concepts, revisit key points and capture derivatives.
• Maintain reasonable pacing throughout the interview and avoid asking for multiple takes unless necessary.

Sound quality is paramount to any successful interview recording. Follow these tips to properly dress a lavalier mic to your talent for optimal pickup and cable disguise:

• Stabilize the microphone capsule with triangles of gaffer’s tape and tie a loose loop in the cable for strain relief.
• If a person is wearing a collared shirt, run the cable up the back of the talent, and underneath the collar.
• If a person is wearing a buttoned-up shirt, hide the lav mic between the buttons and behind the fabric of the shirt.
• If a person is wearing a necktie, run the wire down the back of the necktie and through the label on the back of the tie.
• Be aware of jewelry, long hair, or cable movement that can generate noise and interfere with optimal audio recording.

Make sure to monitor the interview with a pair of quality headphones and note any extraneous noise. Prep the talent to avoid wearing synthetic, lightweight clothing (silk, polyester) that might generate static electricity and interfere with audio recording. At the end of the interview, record several seconds of room tone (ambient sound of the room) to use as a noise sample during editing and ask the talent to sign a model release form.

For additional information on how to select and prep your talent, visit this link: https://blogs.smith.edu/blog/smithvideo/talent/
For information on how to frame and record a video interview, visit this link: https://blogs.smith.edu/blog/smithvideo/interviews/

Written by Kate Lee, Smith College Senior Media Producer