Conducting A Professional Interview ON Camera
Conducting an interview can be a very nerve-racking and scary experience. You have a big responsibility to conduct a successful interview and to ensure that you receive the best response, for example, asking appropriate questions. Interviewing can be very difficult to get right, particularly if you have a subject quite unwilling to open up. Without some professionalism, a little engagement and the ability to set your subject at ease, then your interview might not go as well as anticipated. In this blog, I have summarized a few tips that I discovered in a how to conduct an interview video blog, which was created by a video production company.
To begin the interview a simple question or general conversation often helps the subject to relax and ease into the interview. It does not matter whether they get the question right, in this case you can all have a bit of a laugh and joke about it, again easing the whole experience. This does not have to be used in the final edit. Not only this, it is quite important to let the subject go through there stuff two or three times, so they are able to warm up. Also it is important that the interview is shot more that once so that there is more than enough footage when it comes to the editing, the worst thing is not having enough material.
The set-up of the interview is a simple yet crucial thing to keep in mind. It\’s a good idea to have someone sat next to the camera, either from your team or, preferably someone the subject knows, asking a few questions so that the subject isn\’t having to deal with the pressure of looking directly at the camera. This also means that they do not need to freak out talking to the camera, talking to someone else is much easier. This way they can also imagine that they are having an informal question and answer session rather than an interview, also making it easier for the subject to keep eye contact with the interviewer.
Finally the set up of the interview is another basic yet very important factor to keep in mind. A good idea is to have someone sitting next to camera, this can be either from your team, or someone that the subject knows, asking the person the questions. This is to make them again feel more at ease and less awkward, this way they are not having to deal with the pressure of needing to look directly at the camera. As well as this, the subject can also imagine that they are having a casual question and answer session instead of an interview. With someone next to the camera is also makes it a lot easier for them to keep eye contact, it generally makes the whole experience a little more natural.
Conducting an interview is never going to be an easy task, there is a lot of expectation that comes with it, but I have mentioned some very useful tips to hopefully make the process easier, in my personal opinion I think making sure the subject being interviewed is at ease and comfortable is perhaps the most important. Simply because this is a feature which will effect the whole atmosphere and the mood of the interview throughout, making the interviewers job much harder.
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