How To Shoot An Interview - And How Not To Shoot An Interview

I just screened a piece done by a videojournalist who works for us.

Terrible.

CTLL (clear the timeline) territory.

She had recently graduated from a journalism program at a university that we often hire from.

The first thing we do with new hires is to put them through an intensive training bootcamp where we tell them to 'forget everything they learned in school'.

There is some inevitable backsliding - and this was a classic example of a mistake that many people in the video business make.

When she was in school she was taught to 'do the interview first'.

This involves sitting down with the subject of the story (or subjects) and 'interviewing' them, ad nauseum, to extract a few soundbites you are going to use later.

In the old days at CBS News we worked in the same way. We had so much money that we sent the endless interview tapes out to be transcribed.

We would then shoot some b-roll to 'cover' the interview content.

If the person said 'I often answer the phone and I read books', we would say to the person we just interviewed "could you pick up the phone and talk on it? Could you take a book off the shelf'.  As you can readily see, this makes for some pretty scintilating video.

Our employee had come back from shooting a fairly simple story with a pile of interviews and a bit of 'cover' footage for each person.

A+ at the journalism school

F with us.

If you do this you will find yourself trapped by talking heads.  Boring.  Tons of material to sift through and about as thrilling as watching paint dry.

Where did this idea of the sit-down interview come from?

It came, as did much of current TV production, from radio - the mother source of the media business.

In radio people talk all the time becasue that is all they have to do. The medium is not real good on capturing action or motion or much of anything else. If you are really good in radio you can get the sound of the drippy pipe- the audio equivalent of the b-roll cut away.

This is not to say that people don't have important things to say. They do.  So ask them to say them!

Making a film or video is not a game in which the objective is to 'catch' a person saying something unexpected.  It is not a fishing expedition in which you talk to them endless in the hopes that they may or may not say something interesting at some point, if you keep talking to them long enough.  This is a very focused, very directed operation to extract the important and cogent things they want to say or need to say to help you tell their story - whatever it is.  Your job here is to extract the best sound bites, not 'spread the net and hope'.  So focus.

How do you do that?

Before you can even think about doing an interview you have to shoot the story - or at least the basics of it.  YOU have to know what the story is before you are ready to start asking questions about it. So do that.  Shoot the story. You can have the occasional bite along the way, but hold off on the 'big interview' until all of your primary shooting is done.

Once you have done the primary shooting you are now ready to conduct an interview.  Now you know, in a general sense, the story you want to tell. You also know who the players are who will become your main characaters.

If you have the time, bang together a rough cut of the story on your timeline.

Now, (if you have the time), sit your subject down and show them the bits you need 'help' with.  For example, if you are doing a Reality Show, sit the mother down and show her the video you shot last night.  Put a mic on her.  Now, say to ther 'do you remember last night when you were rushing the baby to the hospital and we were there with the cameras?  Take a look at this. Tell me, how were you feeling at that moment?"

Voila!  She is now creating the narrative for your piece. 

See how simple?

Let's say you are doing a story about a chemical plant that some feel is causing brain tumors.  You have interviewed the mother who thinks the plant is resposible for causing her son's tumors. Now you are about to interview the President of the chemical company.  Put a mic on him or her, crank up the video on your timeline and say 'Here's what a local mother says. How do you respond?"

See how simple this is. Also see how much more journalistically honest this is than piecing together two endless blah blah fishing expeditions to try to make a fit.

If you don't have so much time, at least focus the answers.

"Look, you have watched TV. I am making a 3-minute video on your band.  I need you to tell me what makes your band so great.  You know how this works. You're going to get 20 seconds. Give me your best 20 seconds."

When they finish, ask them - "are you happy with that?  Do you want to say it again in a different way? Anything else you want to add"

This is much more honest than talking to someone for half an hour and extracting one line - or worse, taking a few snippets of soundbites from here and there and jamming them together with a few cut-aways.

So here are my basic rules for interviews:

1. Do them last, not first.

2. Focus the answers

3. Always be honest with the subjects.

4. Shoot a ratio of 80% b-roll to 20% interview

A FINAL NOTE:

I am in Florence, Italy as I write this.  We are on our way to a castle in Tuscany for a week. It has a pool, tennis courts, 14 bedrooms, staff and even a dungeon. What it does not have is Internet!  (I would gladly trade all of the above - except the pool - this August in Italy!) for Wifi, but what is, is.  As a result, I will not be blogging for the next week.  However, I do have my blackberry, and if you have specific questions about anything that can't wait, don't hesitate to get in touch with me directly.  Michael@rosenblumtv.com

Back in a week.