Typically the best storytellers are people who are passionate about their story. So it's not uncommon for churches to use interview videos of people who are passionate about their faith, struggles or experiences. These interview videos make great sermon illustrations, message set up, or sometimes are just a good way to celebrate a milestone or accomplishment.
It cannot be overstated how important it is for your congregation so see and hear stories from other people in the church—and to celebrate personal or communal accomplishments. I also don't think it can be overstated how easy it is to ruin a great passionate story with bad camera work, poor lighting, or lack of attention to detail. Since these videos are a tool that every church should have in their toolbox, let's take a look at some things you can do to make your interviews better.
First things first
For our purposes, interview videos come in two types: videos that showcase a talking head (a head-and-shoulders or tighter shot of a person speaking, usually the person being interviewed) and a typical interview set up, where both the interviewer and the interviewee are in the shot (sometimes interspersed with close ups of either as they're speaking—or a talking head). A typical interview set up will almost always require multiple cameras, while a talking head can be captured with a single camera; but may also be better with multiple cameras—or at least multiple takes.
The main difference in both scenarios is the interviewer's (or church tech's) contribution. In a talking head interview you may have to ask the leading questions from behind the camera to get the footage you need to tell the story. In an interviewer lead interview, it's the interviewer's responsibility to lead the story on-camera, asking the questions that will get answers that move the story along.
In either scenario, the first trick to shooting a good interview is knowing what a good interview looks like. Most local news affiliates shoot excellent interviews for the nightly news. Yet, any show that has experts or eyewitnesses talking to the camera (talking heads) is also a good candidate for inspection. If you watch good interviews specifically to analyze how they were done, you should get lots of ideas for location, lighting, camera placement, and how to lead someone through the telling of their story.
Pre-production considerations
Pre-production for either style of interview will be similar, but should never be taken for granted. Always arrive on location early and be as prepared as you can before your talent arrives. Scout the location ahead of time and plan where you are going to set up before the shoot.
Also remember that often your talent may be someone who does not speak on camera for a living, and [they] will probably be uncomfortable sitting in front of a camera to share their story. It's important not to exacerbate this problem by fumbling around trying to get gear set up. Your professionalism, or lack thereof, can give your talent confidence in what they are about to do or needlessly cripple them. Also remember: If this is someone from your congregation coming in during the week, honoring their time will be important—especially if they are sacrificing a lunch break for the interview.
It cannot be overstated how important it is for your congregation to see and hear stories from other people in the church—and to celebrate personal or communal accomplishments.
The next most important pre-production tip is to plan for redundancy. This is tough for many churches because it automatically requires more gear that may not be used during an interview, which makes it seem like buying that gear is frivolous spending. However, in this case, money is time. It's far easier to just keep rolling if you hear RF interference coming in on your wireless lavalier when you know your shotgun mic is recording just fine. The same goes for dead batteries or running out of tape or card space If your B camera is working fine, you can stop your A camera and you don't have to interrupt your talent, which is an easy way to ruin an interview.
The last easy tip for pre-production is to know what you are shooting. This is important in two aspects. First, know the goal of the shoot. Know why this video is important and how it fits into the weekend service. You don't typically want a really funny video coming right out of a very solemn, introspective worship time.
The second aspect is to know the content in advance. You don't have to know every little detail of what is going to be said, but know the general idea or topic. This is important because you don't want your goal and your topic to be in conflict. It's tough to make a funny video about someone's dog passing away. Make sure the goal of the video, however you plan to use it, fits the content of the video.
Light the talent, but don't stop there
Lighting is critical to capturing usable video. During an interview, good lighting keeps your subject from looking flat and boring—it can, in essence, make or break a video. Let's assume you know basic lighting techniques, but there are still some tricks that can take it up a notch. The first is to light your subject well, but don't stop there. The background is also important. This is especially true in a talking head-type interview if your subject has a wall for a background.
While we are discussing backgrounds, if you have an area that you tend to shoot in often, see if you can paint the wall. If not, buy a muslin backdrop. If you only have the budget for one muslin or can only paint one wall, make it grey. Grey is a neutral color and it doesn't reflect like white or soak up the color so much you can't tell it's there, as black oftentimes does.
Everyone seems to think of the Mac vs. PC commercial with the white background: while it would be tempting to reproduce that, it would get old if it's the only color you have. It's also easy to punch up your background with a spare light, by just putting a barn door closed down to a very small slit, and then add a color gel to it and throw it on the wall or muslin behind your subject. This will give your background some color and separate if from your subject so they don't look totally flat. You see this often in documentaries that contain many talking heads from experts or eyewitnesses.
Overshoot for B-roll
Another easy way to add more life to an interview is to add some B-roll. B-roll is basically any shots that are in addition to the main camera shot; it raises the production value and makes the story more interesting. B-roll is also important because it allows you to cover edits. You can cut to different points in the interview by just cutting to another camera, cutting to another shot, or cutting to a supporting clip from somewhere else entirely.
With a single camera, your edits are going to appear as jump cuts (or edits that appear jerky, when two sequential shots of the same subject vary slightly and seem to jump forward unnaturally in time). Editing in some strategically captured B-roll can help avoid jump cuts in your editing that would be distracting to the viewer.
The trick with B-roll is to shoot enough of it to give you ample options during the editing process. It's not often you are simply going to be provided with awesome supporting video about something someone is talking about in an interview, so it is important to shoot your own. One of the mantras production companies use is “always roll, tape is cheap—missing the shot costs you.”
Shoot your subject walking in and sitting down, don't be afraid to ask them to look right at the camera and be serious, have them smile, have them think about a math problem and then tell them a joke so they laugh. This way, you have all that footage for B-roll. Knowing the content from your pre-production work also comes into play for your B-roll selection; be sure to get the shots you know your story is going to need. For example, get some serious shots of your subject to use as cutaways in a story about their dog passing away, for example.
Shoot with post in mind
Overshooting also applies to resolution, but it requires a little work in postproduction. If you can, you should always shoot at a better resolution than you are delivering. So if you are delivering 720, shoot in 1080. This way, you have two options to make the video fit the resolution; you can scale it to the correct size or crop it. Or in the event that you need it, you can do both—use the scaled for A-roll and the cropped for B-roll. This effectively gives you a two-camera shoot without losing resolution.
Another commonly used overshooting technique that works for the interviewer lead type of interview scenario is to shoot the questions twice. This is where you shoot the whole interview and take copious notes on the answers you are getting from your subject. Then, once you know what the answers are, go back and re-shoot the interviewer asking the questions in a way that makes the answers fit better. Also, if you have one camera, you can shoot the subject the whole time and then go back and get the questions from the interviewer without the subject there at all, and then edit it together like a two-camera shoot.
In the end, interviews are all about storytelling. Either the story is being told to the audience or it's being told to an interviewer. Either way, it's important to do your homework; watch good interviews and analyze them, know your goal, know your content, scout your location, and set up early. Once you are in the thick of things, try minimizing distractions, especially from yourself. Light your subject and your background—and be sure to overshoot. If you do these things, you will have all you need for a high-quality and compelling interview video.
