INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES
INTERVIEWING TECHNIQUES
Successfully interviewing a source requires diligent research and preparation, active listening, and a clear focus and definition of the goals of the interview.
Prior to interviewing your source on-camera, you must go through an extensive reporting phase. During your reporting, you will find out import- ant background information about your source: age, full name, occupation, relationship to other sources, relationship to your story, and so on. Ideally, you will have already interviewed your source several times off-camera. Diligent reporting will allow you to form on-camera questions that yield useful answers. During your reporting, you will be able to determine if your source is a good candidate to go on camera. Will he give you open access and be able to answer questions clearly and succinctly? Have other sources confirmed that your interviewee is honest and trustworthy? Is your source an authority on the topic and will he contribute meaningfully to your story?
Do not set up or shoot any on-camera interviews until you answer these questions:
What is the role of the interview? How do you plan to use the interview answers? Will you or someone else narrate the story? Will the interviewee’s answers be used as anecdotes, observations, or opinions tied together with your narration? Or will your story be non-narrated? If your story is non-narrated, your subject’s answers must provide enough facts, context, anecdotal moments, and narrative descriptions to advance the story in a clear way.
It is much easier to write a script and to narrate your video in post-production. If your sources do not precisely or succinctly answer questions, your narra- tor can clarify the interviews. Non-narrated stories are challenging, but they can be much more intimate. If you choose to produce a non-narrated story, you must solicit enough strong sound bites and quotes from your sources to
be able to tell your story. It is important for you to determine which style of storytelling you will use—narrated or non-narrated—before you begin to shoot your story. You must know if you are getting meaningful answers in
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Interview check list. Once you are ready to begin your interview, go through this check list to avoid any technical errors during the recording of your interview:
Make sure your camera’s battery has been fully charged and your recording media has been loaded and formatted. Be sure to have extra batteries and media on hand. Every videographer I know has experienced the pain of going to a shoot without enough batteries or media. This is an expensive and easily avoidable error.
Check that your white balance and exposure settings are correct.
Clip the lavalier microphone onto your subject and test that the microphone is sending an audio signal to the camera.
Actively listen for ambient noise. Is the air conditioner on? Your camera will pick up all room and street noise.
Check your interviewee’s audio levels. Make small talk with your source—ask about the weather or the local sports team. As your source speaks, adjust the camera’s gain so that your recording meter peaks at around −12db.