When doing an interview it is necessary that there are at least three people involved. The person being interviewed, you, the interviewer, and someone to work the camcorder. It could be argued, I would say, that an extra person to handle the sound is a great benefit, but this is a policy of perfection.
Interviewing for video is a skill that can be acquired with practice. The key to a successful interview is to research, research, and even more research.
Before interviewing a subject, you need to know as much as possible about the person you are interviewing.
And you need to read everything that anyone has written on the subject.
That’s what the internet is for. Normally it contains everything written in recent times.
The more information you can get, the more research you do, the smoother the interview will go.
Having said that, it is vital that you, the interviewer, ask questions and know when to shut up.
The problem is that you will often find yourself knowing more about a subject than the person you are interviewing, and so the temptation is to show off your knowledge.
this is fatal
The viewer is not interested in your views. It is the person interviewed – the interviewee – who should be the center of attention. And before you ask, yes, this is a big problem for me. I can’t keep my mouth shut.
Be prepared for interviews that go smoothly and those that get a little bumpy. Three examples.
I had an hour long interview with Bill Gates in Sydney for Australian television. My questions were well prepared. He would listen to the question, remain silent for a moment, and then give a convincing and grammatical answer. Amazing. As an interview it was like a dream.
On the other hand, I was wrong about one a lot. The interview with the late Tony Hancock, perhaps the greatest British comedian of his day, took place at Sebel Town House in Sydney. It started off as a disaster because he hadn’t done enough homework. It leveled out after a while and worked out reasonably well in the end. As it happens, it was the last interview given by Tony Hancock.
Then I did a series of interviews with members of my family. I stayed out of the take and let them ramble about what they thought of their brothers. It was kind of electrifying. If you were a member of that family.
Write down all your questions and create follow-up questions in case you don’t get an answer, a good answer. Avoid questions that elicit a one word ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.
If you ask ‘Are you in favor of premarital sex?’ you will probably get a one word answer, which is not the idea at all.
Formulate your questions in such a way that they lead the interviewee to broaden their views. ‘Your book by him suggests that you are against premarital sex. What are your views on this?’ you are much more likely to get a complete and frank comment than the first question.
To avoid a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, use the tried and true journalist technique of asking who, what, why, how and when.
None of these can be answered with a direct ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Before the interview begins, you, the interviewer, need to get to know the subject and establish some sort of debrief. There are interviewers, a few, who can go cold and get a good result. But they are few and far between.
The preliminary talk is, so to speak, part of your investigation. With it you will establish the interviewee’s ability to speak, to express himself, to answer questions. It is possible that this preliminary chat will end with the modification of some of your questions.
In your preliminary talk, avoid asking the specific questions you will ask in the interview.
Instead, indicate the general areas of interest. If you ask the specific questions, the filmed interview will give the impression that it has been rehearsed.
Before you start your interview, have your key questions laid out and ready. You need a certain amount of flexibility, but more often than not you’ll find that your first logical thoughts or the order of questions is much better than one that you compile on the fly.
There are two main ways to handle an interview.
The first is where the question is not heard and the questioner is not seen. Instead, you get answers that are obviously directed at someone who is out of character.
A series of responses like this can be edited together by one or more people, to provide the effect of a continuous interview.
In these types of interviews you ask the question and then keep your mouth shut. If some kind of reaction is needed, nod or shake your head vigorously or smile to encourage it. If it talks, it will have to be edited later. Which is not always easy.
This technique can be seen used to magnificent effect in the film ‘When Harry Met Sally’, which contains a series of such interviews with married couples describing their lives together. Magic.
The other type of interview is where both of you are on the screen in the manner of a normal conversation. This type of interview can easily be covered with a camera.
Film the interviewee’s answers first, and then film the interviewer from where the interviewee has been sitting, asking the exact same questions. At the end, you make a series of ‘noddies’ that can be used for cuts.
The key to making such an interview work is to get the person to relax. Try to film them in a familiar environment so they don’t feel threatened. Keep your camera work and lighting as low-key as possible.
The first question should be a sound level check and it should be completely innocuous.
Start the interview very softly in chat mode and always go from soft to hard questions seamlessly.
Don’t start off as a gang member or the interviewee will shut up or, worst case scenario, walk away. Happens.
At the end of the interview I always ask ‘Is there a question you would like me to ask that I missed?’
This allows the subject to expand on a point or deal with an area that they feel has been left out. It’s quite remarkable how often he’ll get a great and helpful answer after that last question.
Start with a long shot of the interviewee facing the interviewer. The interviewer’s back appears, giving the shot a three-dimensional aspect and contextualizing the scene for the viewer. Change shot sizes at the pace of the questions. New question, new frame.
Another form of video interviewing is vox pop – from vox populi, Latin for voice of the people – these are quick interviews with people on the street to demonstrate public opinion on an issue.
What you want in the end is a series of statements that can be put together quickly and, in the end, give a clear indication of the current attitude on an issue.
To make the interview more interesting, change the shot size as a new question is asked. That is, turn off, zoom in from, say, medium to close-up, and then resume shooting again.
Use different backgrounds and different lines of eyes.
Figure out how many interviews you want, and then shoot for that number with a 50 percent safety margin. Do not continue shooting after that point. You could be getting useful footage for another scene instead of wasting time. In vox pop moderation is the key.
Keep in mind that subjects may move back and forth when making a point and may even wave their arms in the air and you need to be prepared for this so they are always in the shot. That the camera does not cut parts of their bodies. Interviewees without arms can be harmless interviewees, but that is not the point of the exercise.