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Interviewing is an Art. Here, I’d like to answer some questions about video interview questions and answers.

Interviews fill a role when you need to fill out a story that can’t otherwise be illustrated, or simply lacks a lot of visuals. This is a problem at times for all video producers. Interviews with your subject or those who know them well can add warmth, humor and insight to your project and can be used on camera (see the person talking) or off-camera (hear the person talking while historical visual material is presented).

The Interview: On Camera or Off Camera?

There are two ways to conduct interviews: on camera and off camera.

On-camera interviews, when used correctly, become off-camera interviews very quickly, because there is nothing more boring than a talking head with no illustrative material.

So if you are using video interviews, you might establish the individual talking for a few seconds, then begin to hear their audio only, while you show pictures of what they are discussing.

Granted, this is not always possible.

But unless the person is incredibly charming and a great raconteur, on-camera interviews can be deadly. Think back to any documentary you’ve seen that featured primarily interviews. Pretty hard to take, wasn’t it? (I’m looking at you, Ken Burns).

The other way of conducting an interview is entirely off camera, whether you record it with a video camera or with a digital recorder, MP3 recorder, or tape recorder.

The beauty of the off-camera interview is that you can edit it to take out weird pauses, “hems and haws,” non sequiturs, irrelevant side stories, etc. In short, you can make interviewees seem to stick to the story, even when they didn’t. Remember what we said about sequencing and timeline logic. Unless the interviewees are on point, your show can get thrown for a loop. You almost certainly will have to edit what they say. In either case, you should be prepared, both in terms of content and also the technical aspects.

Preparing for Interviews (technical): Hear Me, See Me

The single most important tool here will be a good microphone (obviously true for an audio-only interview as well).

A lavaliere microphone can be clipped to a person’s tie, shirt or blouse, or lapel. You will get a rich recording in which outside noise is limited or reduced. (Using the on-camera microphone is so often a disaster because it picks up literally everything.) With more sophistication, you can use a boom microphone ( a microphone attached to a pole and helped by the audio person out of camera range).

For an on-camera interview, you will want at a minimum some “fill light” to illuminate your subject’s face. Almost certainly there will be other lights in the room where you’re recording, and very often windows which will be brighter than the rest of the scene. You’ll have to compensate for that through positioning of your subject, closing the drapes, or somehow blocking of the light source (like the window).

It is not necessary for you to be a spectacular lighting expert or cinematographer to acquire a good interview. You simply have to know what looks good. Look in the viewfinder or at the monitor attached your camcorder, and place yourself in the shoes of the audience. Do you like what you see? Does your interviewee look good, or does he look like Nick Nolte’s DWI-booking photo?

A fill light—a small light on the camcorder or a light on a tripod (light stand) near the camcorder allows a person’s facial features to stand out from the background and not appear to be dark. It is 90 percent of the professional lighting equation.

Preparing Interviews (content): Get Them to Talk!

To save time, and because this video is not about you, generally, the audience will not hear your questions. They will hear only the answers, given in such a way that the audience can understand what the interviewee is talking about without the need for questions.

Some Rules

To this end, there are some rules to conducting an interview so that your subject does not reply with grunts, groans, hems, haws, yes’s and no’s. What you’re looking for is extended sentences, off-the-cuff comments, and a real discussion that will engage the audience. Remember, you’re not going to use all of this—you will select the best parts, place them into the show in the proper order, and build the show around them.

1. Never ask questions that could elicit only “yes” or “no” answers.

Check out the difference:

The wrong way: “Were you born in New York?”

Answer: “Yes.”

How many words did your question result in? One—a totally unusable “yes.” The right way: “Tell me where you were born.”

Answer: “I was born in New York City.”

Even better question: “Tell me where you were born and what it was like back then.”

By asking a complex question, you are leading to an extended discussion in which the subject begins to access memories and is encouraged to talk freely from the top of the head. In other words, rather than one word or one sentence, you’ll get a multi-sentence, conversational answer. This can lead to many pleasant surprises, as the subject begins to display their wit, charm, and their own storytelling ability.

Granted, not everyone is a charmer. But, at a minimum, getting long answers makes putting your show together a much easier proposition.

2. Listen intently.

When you’re conducting the interview, listen intently and form follow-up questions. Don’t have a brand-new question totally prepared and ready to go, because the subject may be interested in continuing down the path they started. If you cut them off in the middle of their thinking, you could miss some of the best material you might ever get.

As you’re listening to their answers, consider how you might illustrate what they’re talking about. If they’re talking about life in New York City, you more than likely can get appropriate photographs from old magazines, online libraries, and other online photographic resources. Many are free, easily downloadable, and, because they’re in digital format, they’ll be ready to use in your video editing system.

But also listen for cues for things you might shoot in their home following the interview. If the interviewee talks about awards, plaques, or letters they received, ask if you can make copies, scan, or even shoot right there on site.

At a minimum, shooting a pan shot of the home, the rooms, the pictures on the wall, the awards, the memorabilia, the desk where the person works, the smoker’s pipe, or the cook’s wok can give you interesting details that will help keep your visual turnover and edit ratio up.

3. Don’t let the subject look at the camera.

Traditional interviewing technique has a subject talking to an off-camera interviewer, usually to the left or to the right of the camera. If you are working alone, set up your shot, start recording, and then move to the left of the camera so your subject is looking at you while answering the questions. You don’t want them talking to the camera. This tells the audience that they know they’re being recorded and that their answers might not be genuine.

Responding to the off-screen interviewer gives a sense of journalistic integrity.

Of course, every rule is made to be broken. In one video we prodiuced years ago, “Nana Floss Burke,” very little pictorial material was available. And in fact it is not Nana Floss who is being interviewed.

Rather, her son is talking directly to the camera (which he’s quite good at), interviewing his children and other relatives, and they are pretty much answering him as if he is the camera. It’s an exception that proves the rule.

Video Interview Questions and Answers: Bottom Line

Interviews can add heart and information to a video. But in and of themselves, they are not as powerful as picture sequences and music. So they should be used only when necessary and kept brief. The key once again is to remember that audiences are fickle and boredom is the devil’s workshop. If you keep it chronological, don’t repeat yourself, change the pace for each new era or subject, you’ll be successful in honoring the subject and wowing the audience.

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