Conducting an Interview

Interview style videos are perfect for conveying specific information about your products, services, team or your brand in general. Below you will find information on how to prepare for an interview.

How to prepare for an interview

Once you are clear on your objective you can choose your interview questions. You will find a list of interview questions for brands here and for case studies here.

Keep in mind the length of the video when thinking of the amount of questions. Look over the words per minute guidelines here.

Next, write down some key points or angles that you want to be spoken about, so that your objectives are being met with this video. We recommend asking the questions and then providing the person with a prompt. See below for an example:

“We’ve noticed that since using our online platform, your business has seen a drastic increase in leads per month. In your own words please tell us what this means for your business, and start with… Since we joined the online platform our business has XYZ”

How we shoot it:

We set up two cameras, and have the interviewee looking slighlty off camera to you, they won’t be looking down the barrel of the lens at all.

As we’re using two cameras, we can edit anything out afterwards (i.e. this isn’t a ‘start to finish’ filming - we’re just trying to find the best bits and edit them together with other clients)

Here is an example of what a the raw interview vs polished edited interview looks like.

General things to note for case studies/testimonials:

On the day we highly recommend that either you or a staff member from your business is there on the day to help conduct these interviews for a few reasons. A client is more likely to open up & feel comfortable with someone they have personally dealt with, you/your employees are also more across the interactions that the client has had with your business so they know when to get the client to elaborate on their answers. However if you are unable to facilitate this, one of our crew members will be able to conduct the interview.

Make sure you’re not saying “mmm” or “yeah” whilst they’re responding, just nod and show that you are listening without saying anything until they have finished speaking.

Before each interview, mentally identify the key parts / angles of their story you want to tease out, so you can make sure they’re covered off on.

Don’t just follow the questions. Listen intently to the answers, and dig deeper into interesting bits. The art of telling a good story is listening closely and honing in on their answers. Most of the gold comes from being present and seeing the story come to life during the chat rather than being overly prescriptive.

Throughout the interview, keep summarising the guest’s answers in order to reiterate key points and tell the story the way you want to, rather than just moving onto the next question.

Harness the power of silence after they have answered, if you’re not satisfied with what you’ve got. They will often fill the silence with GOLD.

If you get the sense they are getting emotional about an answer, don’t back away, lean into it.