How to interview

The Interviewee A good interview starts with the choice of your subject. Ideally the person you interview is a stakeholder with appropriate experience in the topic. Give your interviewee a general sense of what you want to discuss, but try to avoid giving the questions ahead of time. Spontaneous answers – straight from the heart -- always sound more genuine.

The Environment Interview locations and backgrounds help set the stage, provide context, and reinforce credibility. Interview a teacher in their classroom, desks behind them. You can interview the football coach in front of the trophy case or on the field. Dress it up to make the environment more interesting. Remove anything that resembles clutter, you don’t want to distract the view. Move items to create suitable space for your equipment and to manage the foreground and background.

Subject and Camera Placement Where you place the camera in relation to your subject and background has a profound effect on the look of your interview. Nothing spells amateur more than a perfectly centered head in front of a generic background. To determine the best screen placement for your interviewee, use the rule of thirds.

Subject and Camera Placement Consider camera height relative to the subject’s sightline. Keep the camera close to eye level and relatively neutral. Don’t give any or take away any perceived authority by shooting from above or below eye level. If possible, place your subject far enough in front of the background to throw the background slightly out of focus. This helps draw more attention to your subject rather than his or her surroundings.

Lighting With basic 3-point lighting you place a key light to one side of the camera. Normally the key light is on the side where the subject is looking. A fill light opposite the key will fill shadows created by the key light. The backlight should create a rim effect around the head and shoulder of the subject to provide separation from the background. Or you can use the sun and a reflector. This is important if shooting in a office with a window.

Audio Ideally a small lavaliere mic works best for most interviews. But if not, a shotgun mic either on the camera, mounted or boomed toward the subject is good. Make sure you are in an area with no or minimal ambient noise. Always have someone monitor the audio with headphones for technical quality and noise while you are setting up and during production. A handheld mic can be distracting in a sit down interview but if you are walking with a subject it may be optimal.

HOW TO GET OPTIMAL SOUNDBITES Soundbite = a short phrase or sentence that deftly captures the essence of what the speaker is trying to say. This is the key to the interview, a small usable “bite” of audio that provides the emotion or feeling of the piece. To get brief, complete, stand-alone answers, you will likely need to coach your interviewees. “Since I won’t be in the interview, we need your answers to be self-contained. Don’t just repeat the question but blend it into your answers. For example, “How did it feel when you won the championship game?” might get you the answer “Amazing.” Not very useful, but if the interviewee blends the question and answer the response could be something like, “It felt amazing when we won the championship.” or “When we won the championship, it was the best feeling in the world.”

Good interviewers have questions prepared ahead of time, but they are ready to go “off-script”. Ask follow-up questions. As the interviewer, it is your job to get good useable answers. Redirect or re-phrase a question to get a different answer if necessary. Or just don’t say anything, wait, and the subject will probably start talking to break the awkward silence. Reframe the camera every once in a while to vary the look of the answers. You may occasionally need to cut from part of one answer to part of another using b-roll to hide a jump-cut.

Wrap Up Ask if there is anything else they would like to add and give them an opportunity to do so. You might also ask if they would be okay with you coming back in case you missed something important. Make sure you THANK THEM for their time and thoughts.