February 7, 2011 \ Geoff Birmingham
Dud Interviews – Why You Want to Avoid Them

Regardless of what kind of investment you made to hire your video production company, it makes sense to get the most possible value out of them. And one area in which you can make sure to maximize the value of your investment is during your actual production – the day(s) you spend on set or location filming with your producer.

It doesn’t take a master logician to understand that if your producer gets a lot of good footage during the production phase, your money’s well spent. A lot of what determines whether the footage is outstanding or only so-so depends on the skill of the producer, of course, but a client can also help improve the good-to-lousy ratio.

video production crew shooting interviewOne of the easiest ways to do this is by lining up interviewees who will whack a home run for you. Or at least deliver a solid double. The worst scenario is for your crew to spend time identifying the right location for the interview, setting up the camera and the lights, prepping the set, and then he/she comes in and completely strikes out.  Not only is the material of no value, but you’ve lost time that could have been used for other, more productive activities.

So, during pre-production, when you are thinking about candidates to be interviewed for your video, try to assess how well you think they will “perform” on camera.  Even if a person is a leader within an organization, or is popular among his colleagues, that doesn’t necessarily mean he has to be interviewed.

There’s a strong argument for even doing a mini-audition of sorts with the people you have in mind to interview.  Talk with your “candidates,”  inform them you can’t invite everyone to speak on camera but that you’re trying to identify the best folks to represent the organization.  Tell them what you want to accomplish with your video and what you need communicated.  Perhaps you even throw out one or two practice interview questions and see how they respond.

If they are enthusiastic about the project and bring their own ideas to the conversation, then you can probably confident that everything will go smoothly and they will make a valuable contribution. That, in turn, will help ensure you are spending your production dollars well.

Photo: deltaMike