2/24/14 First “Match Spotlight” Video

Today was a very exciting day! It was my first time: shooting a video for BBBSCM, interviewing a kid, and returning to the Plumley Village meeting site. In this blog post, I will be describing the process I’m currently at with creating a video: coming up with a concept, writing interview questions, conducting the interview, collecting b-roll, and wrapping up the shoot.

Concept Creation

Jeff and I knew we wanted more video content, and BBBSCM has a tradition of creating “Match Spotlights” but they are usually in the form of written blog posts or articles. These “Match Spotlights” highlight a certain Big and Little match that has been together for a while, shown significant growth since being paired, and/or has been successful in making both the Big and Little very happy. Since Jeff and I were brainstorming content for the main panel of our February newsletter and I had already spotted a match or two that would be good for a video, I suggested we embed a Match Spotlight video (not a written piece) into our e-newsletter. When trying to come up with a concept for a video, I would encourage people to think about 3 things: their audience, their message, and their purpose. For BBBSCM, our purpose is to gain brand awareness, which we will do by engaging our audience which is mostly online (video as a our preferred medium) and largely youth, and we aim to spread the message that BBBSCM can change lives. This Match Spotlight aims to spread this message by choosing interviewees that have had life changing experiences with BBBSCM.

Writing Interview Questions

Once you’ve figured out what your message is, you’ll want to 1. not solely think about questions to ask, but 2. write them down. I always ask questions that cover the basics but then probe about the most interesting parts of their experience that pertain to the message we want to send. So for example, basic questions could be: how did you first hear about x?, why did you decide to join x?, how long have you been doing x?, what do you like about x? Furthermore, probing questions are usually like: how has x impacted your life?, how did x compare to your initial expectations?, what was your best memory from x?, etc. The basic questions are necessary for getting the viewer acquainted with the interviewee, and the probing questions are essential for getting the intended message across.

Conducting the Interview

I always give a little spiel at the beginning of every interview that has three purposes: to make the interviewee comfortable, to orient the interviewee, and to teach the interviewee how to speak in the interview. You always need to make the interviewee comfortable—many interviewees have never been interviewed before, let alone on camera. Ask the interviewee how their day is going, make them laugh or smile, and essentially act like you’re two friends hanging out. Being interviewed on camera can be absolutely terrifying for some people, even if they signed up for it thinking it’d be a breeze. It’s important, as the interviewer, to set the tone of the interview and get the interviewee feeling as comfortable as possible. The more comfortable they are, the more they’ll talk, the more compelling things they’ll say, and the better footage you’ll get.

Secondly, it’s important to orient the interviewee. Tell them who you are, tell them a bit of your background, tell them why you’re interviewing them and what’s going to happen to the footage. This builds trust between the interviewer and interviewee, and it gives the interviewee a better idea of what kinds of content you’re looking for.

Thirdly, there are certain things people who are getting interviewed need to know. I always ask or tell the following things:

• “Have you ever been interviewed before? Were you filmed?”
  • If they have, they may already know the following. If not, the following is important.
• “I’m going to set the camera here, but let’s just pretend we’re having a casual conversation and you can look right at me.”
  • This eases them (“casual conversation”) but also tells them that they don’t need to look right into the camera lens.
• “I’m going to ask you questions, but when I edit this, I’m going to completely edit myself out, so the viewer will only see your answers. That means, when you answer, please try to answer the question by repeating the prompt”
  • I usually give an example: “If I ask you what your favorite color is, don’t just say ‘blue’, because the viewer won’t know what you’re talking about. It’s better to say ,’My favorite color is blue’.
  • I also always say: “Sometime I may ask you a question, and you will suddenly forget to repeat the prompt. If that happens, don’t worry, it happens all the time, I’ll just interrupt you and ask you to answer again, no worries”
• “Also, remember to speak more loudly and clearly than usual. Some people trail off in volume when they’re talking, and that’s totally normal, but if that happens while we’re filming I may ask you to repeat your answer.”

I’m including the raw footage from today’s interview to show how a nine minute interview will get condensed into two minutes for the final product. Some things to note in this interview:

• Colby is an amazing interviewee—articulate, well spoken, and remembers to repeat prompts.
• I don’t interrupt or interject my interviewee unless it’s absolutely necessary.
• I listen and respond to her answers, saying “awesome” or “that’s great” after every answer. Luckily, Colby was very thorough and I never had to probe her further. But sometimes you’ll get an interviewee that will say something like “I had the pleasure of working with Professor So-and-So on my research project in Brazil and it was absolutely amazing,” and you need to be paying attention to then ask them, “why was it amazing?”, “what exactly are you researching?”
• You can’t see in the video, but I’m maintaining eye contact with her, nodding my head, and smiling when she speaks. I’m reinforcing that we’re having a conversation, and that she isn’t at a podium in a daunting auditorium.
• At the end of the interview I ask: “Is there anything you want to add? Something I didn’t ask about?” I always, always ask this because sometimes the interviewee will remember something about their experience while answering another question, and won’t get the chance to elaborate on it unless I give them the floor.
• This isn’t pictured, but always thank your interviewee when you’re done. I also always have my interviewees write down their name for me “as they want it captioned”, because you may get their name from a roster when they actually prefer to be called something else.

This is raw footage from the same interview, but this time with the Little, Wendy, as the interviewee. ALL of the things I’ve mentioned before are the same in this video, however, you’ll notice that I did have to interrupt Wendy a few times to remind her to repeat the prompt. Eventually, she remembered, and she did an awesome job. Another important thing is to read your interviewee. After Wendy proved to be a bit, well, concise in her answers, I decided not to probe her too, too much. I think Wendy would have lost her enthusiasm if I pushed her to give me “more thoughtful” responses. You’ll also notice that when I asked Wendy questions, I elaborated a bit more: “How has being a little impacted your life—have you become happier, healthier, more confident maybe??” This is important; a younger person is not going to be able to think profoundly about that question without a bit more to go on. At the end of the video, I realized I didn’t get much content from Wendy, and I asked her if there was a specific memory she had. I was thrilled that Wendy was able to share a time they went to one of Colby’s field hockey games.

Collecting B-roll

“B-roll” is secondary footage, it’s background footage, miscellaneous footage, extra stuff. B-roll is great to have because it adds more visuals and content to a video, it can pose as transitional footage when you need to cut a piece of audio abruptly, and much more. I try to get a mix of b-roll media: photos and videos. Here are three sections of b-roll from today’s interview. You’ll notice that they are from varying angles and varying distances.

Wrapping up the Shoot

Before you go, don’t forget to thank your interviewees again. If possible, shake their hand and tell them that you’ll contact them when the video is finished. Tell them again that they did an awesome job today.

Want to see the finished video? Well you better follow me then!