How To Prepare to be Interviewed For a Video
Dramatised, scripted and highly creative videos can be the best option at times. However, there are other times when a talking-head interview will work better and be more compelling to your audience. Talking-head interviews will generally be created using a prompted interview technique. The result will be a simple but effective video where one person is talking to another and it makes more sense to people, as we are social animals, of course. If you have been asked to appear in one of these videos, you might be wondering what steps you should take to prepare. There are some tips that you can use that will help everything go smoothly.
Do Not Rehearse What You Will Say
A lot of people assume that not rehearsing will be counterproductive. However, this is something that you should avoid doing when asked to be in a talking-head interview. In a lot of situations, some preparation will produce the best results, but this is not one of them. If you rehearse your responses, they can come across as wooden in the video. You will sound stiff and unconvincing to the viewer. It is important to remember that audiences are sensitive to inauthentic responses and rehearsed answers will feel false to them.
What Not to Wear
You need to avoid clothing that has any logos or slogans on them. This can distract the viewer and confuse them. It will also affect the consistency of the branding within the video. Avoid any fabric that has stripes, checks, spots or other busy patterns. Detailed and busy patterns can cause a moiré effect on the video. This is when the camera creates an image with a strange wavy pattern on the fabric. Avoid wearing jangling jewellery. The amount of noise that your bracelets, earrings and necklace make is something that you do not notice in everyday life. However, the microphone is more sensitive to this and will pick up every rattle and click while you are talking and gesticulating.
Trust the Interviewer
When you are in the hands of a skilled production team, your prompted interview will unfold in a conversational manner. This ensures that your responses are spontaneous and natural. It is also important that you trust the interviewer and do not become flustered if the line of questioning is not what you imagined. It is important that you go with the flow.
Let Go and Do Not Be Too Careful
Prompted interviews can be steered to get the required messaging, but they will also create insight and anecdotal gems. This is something that no-one plans for and you should not. These gems are generally discovered aspects of your story and will provide personality to your video making it more persuasive and moving. They will also be moments of the video that the audience will remember.
Take Your Time
When you feel pressured to perform, you will talk faster because you are nervous about pauses. This happens because you do not want to appear at a loss for words. However, slower speakers will make a greater impact on the viewer and will be able to get their message across better.
Smile
To make the video more engaging, you should try smiling at the start and end of what you say. Research has found that people are more likely to trust you when you smile. This trust will result in them being more inclined to believe what you are saying. Of course, you should be genuine when you smile as people will be able to tell if you are faking it.
Show Some Emotion
The strongest footage will often be close to the end of the interview. This is when interviewees feel that the job has been completed and will start to talk from the heart more. It is important to note that you might feel overly emotional in your responses, but the camera does mute this to a certain extent. Commercial video production services can help unmute this in post, but showing a genuine passion for the subject you talk about is what you need to make the interview believable and engaging to the audience.
