The Art of Shooting a Perfect Interview

Anybody who’s ever shot any form of documentary will know that shooting an interview isn’t a walk in the park. There’s lots of things to consider – the location, the date, the equipment – and that’s even before we get to the talent!

So here at Lenzflare, we’ve compiled our top ten tips of shooting the perfect interview first time, every time. You can guarantee that with a little help from these pointers, you’ll never come back to disappointing documentary footage ever again.

• Make the interviewee as comfortable as possible. Making sure that the interviewee is comfortable with the interviewer is key to a healthy and natural-sounding interview. Consider introducing the questions in advance, so that the interviewee has time to think about them prior to the interview. Assure them that the video isn’t live – so if they make a mistake, it’s as easy as beginning once more.
• Consider a pre-interview prior to the shoot. If time and budget allows, you can get a great idea as to how the interviewee will perform on camera by performing a test shoot – or a “pre-interview”. Not only will this add to your peace of mind, but it will make the interviewee feel even more comfortable about being in front of the camera; saving a great deal of re-takes on the day!
• Smile! We can’t stress how important this is. By making the interviewee smile for 2-3 seconds at the beginning and the end of an interview, it paints the interviewee in a positive light and allows for far easier cutting around in the edit. Everyone has a beautiful smile, after all!
• Shape your questions around your desired answers. For example; say if you wanted an answer to be along the lines of “Working at Lenzflare makes me feel great, and I can’t wait to see how the next six months work out!”, you would shape the question to correspond it. So in this example, the question would take the form of “How do you feel when about working at Lenzflare, and how do you feel about the next six months?”.
• Don’t ignore your background! You don’t want something which will distract the audience’s attention, negatively or positively. That means avoid plain walls, but don’t make your background too busy. Adding relevance helps too; for example, if it’s an office worker, try to frame them up in their workplace. Green plants and other location-related props can always contribute, too.
• Frame your subject correctly. You don’t want your interviewee looking directly down the barrel of the lens. It looks highly unprofessional, and also makes it difficult for the interviewee when the questions are being asked, since they will be unsure where to look. If your interviewer is placed behind the camera to the left, frame your interviewee to the right – so they look across the frame to the interviewer.
• Avoid autocue. Autocue should be used for pieces-to-camera to give the effect that the talent is reading flawlessly from memory. In an interview, you want honest answers to reflect the talent’s personality and to sound as natural as possible.
• Don’t forget your buzztrack! A buzztrack is a one-to-three minute clip of “room noise”. Since no room is truly quiet, a buzztrack is key to ensuring sound design in the edit goes without a hitch. The track can be used and repeated underneath the interview to make clip cutting and bridging clips a lot easier.
• Use lighting if possible. If the interview is outdoors, then clearly this point isn’t relevant. However, if indoors, a three-point lighting setup will permit seamless edits, as there will be little to no lighting differences between the cuts.
• Location, location, location! Last (but certainly not least…!) is the location in which you set your interview. Consider somewhere you’re not going to encounter any sound issues – for example, in a locked, quiet room. This will ensure that you have clean audio, once again ensuring a clean cut in the edit.

…and that’s all there is to it! Ten helpful hints which should help you increase your skills when faced with the tricky challenge of an interview. With a little confidence and these rules, shooting an interview should be an exciting, entertaining experience, with a fantastic outcome.