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Prepping for the Interview

Lesson 11 from: Creating a Video From Start to Finish

Victor Ha

Prepping for the Interview

Lesson 11 from: Creating a Video From Start to Finish

Victor Ha

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Lesson Info

11. Prepping for the Interview

Before you head into the interview, have a list of questions -- and practice asking them. Master the essentials for interview prep, including research.
Next Lesson: Capturing Audio

Lesson Info

Prepping for the Interview

So, preparing for the interview. Know what question you're going to ask before you ask it. That's just plain and simple, okay? That's just standard run-of-the-mill. Practice asking a question with a pause at the end. Okay, so like, a lot of times, we swallow words as people who speak English in America, okay? So, we'll run through a question and then not give a person an opportunity to answer that question before we keep talking, okay? So find a way to like, stop. And what you're going to find out throughout the course of this is someone will say something, okay? And they'll just, you know, continue to talk, and then if you give them a little bit of a dead spot in the interview, they'll keep talking 'cause they think they have to, you know? It's a really good way just to keep them talking, you know, and just be engaged with them, like give them positive reinforcement that you're listening, like nod your head, and you know, but bite that tongue. Don't say anything, okay? Let them talk, ...

it's about them, okay? That's the most, we have to always drill it back down to like, okay, what is this interview for? Is it for you to seem like the next Anderson Cooper, you know? Do you want to be the next Anderson Cooper, or do you actually want the client to be, you know, put forth in a piece that's really, really good? Okay, and that's the challenge, okay? How are we doing? You guys Follow me on this? Have you guys, is this helpful, like is this something that is really good for you guys? Awesome, great. About the types of questions that you're asking, and it's, how do you ask a question if you're needing them to repeat, or include in their answer, some of the information that is in your question? Yeah, so you think about, the thing about that question, it's actually really a good question. So, when I set up an interview, I'm always going to remind the client to answer in complete sentences, okay? So, I'll give an example, I say, "Okay, so, just remember, "okay, the only thing that I'm ever going to tell you "to do is to answer me in a complete sentence, which means, "if I tell, if I ask you a question, how long have you been "doing this, you can't say 15 years, okay? "You have to say, I've been doing this for 15 years." Because to be able to piece together a narrative from an interview, you have to have imperative statements. You can't just have these broken sentences that don't work, okay? So, it's like, 15 years ago, you know, you sound like you're giving a speech, right, and you can't have that. The key to having it sound organic is to having the client answer in a complete sentence, okay? So, let's practice that really quickly. So, where are you from? I was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Okay, that's a great answer. I am from, I was born and raised in Tacoma, Washington, okay? I used this one earlier, how long have you been photographing? I've been photographing from since I was 13. Okay, so these imperative statements really allow us to kind-of craft a structure around the interview, okay? And, I think like, if you really, really dive deeply into this, you'll find that the imperative statements will lead us in to the broken statements that invariably happen during an interview. 'Cause someone's always going to not answer in a complete sentence, but then you can use that imperative statement, lead into it with the broken statement, okay? You need those, okay? Those are very, very, very, very important. And just a follow-up on that, if you realize that the person didn't answer in that complete sentence, would you ask them to repeat it? Yeah, you know, I think there's a moment where you have to kind-of coax them a little bit, and I think like, so, I'm going to ask the year question, okay? So, I'm going to give you the year question again. I'll show you how I would redirect it. So, how long you been doing this? 15 years. Great, so 15 years, could you tell me a little bit more about, you know, what got you into it? So, you know, maybe start with, you know, I've been doing this for 15 years? Oh, well, about 15 years ago, I saw this shiny camera. Yeah, see, so, it's conversational. You know, lead them, okay? Be like, hey, you blah, blah, blah, blah? Maybe start with hey, 15 years ago I did this. So, how important are the imperative and complete sentences when you are going to be on camera with them? So, if it's a different situation like that, do you still really need to try and lead them into those complete sentences? So, the type of client profile that we're going to be doing here, okay, is very important to not have the necessity of someone else on camera pitching the question. This type of client profile leans on imperative statements, okay? It's dependent upon imperative statements. If you can't get them to say an imperative statement, you're going to be in a really, really, really in a big pickle when you come to edit. Now, there are types of profiles where if someone's interviewing and that kind of thing, that's a different type of client profile, okay? That's not the one that we're going for. The ones we are going for are more, kind-of narrative-based. They're more, kind-of like inspirational. They're more, kind-of like directionally-focused based upon what the client says they are, okay? They're kind-of different, but if someone was on camera with me, and they are asking the question, and they were pitching, we were just talking back and forth, that's fine. They could ask question, I can answer back and forth, and it would totally work because you're hearing the question, okay? A good tip on making sure if you're getting it right is if you can discern the question from the answer, then you got it right, okay? If you can discern the question from the answer, then you totally got it right, okay? So, conducting an interview, I said it earlier, not about you, okay? It's definitely not about you, it's about them. This whole thing is about them. For once in a lot of these people's lives, something is just about them. So let them enjoy that, okay? Let them experience that, let them have fun with it, okay? 'Cause that's going to be fun. Ask follow-up questions, keep asking why, and then, slow the interview down when it matters. Especially when it resonates with you. If something, what is it? If your Spidey-sense starts to tingle, that's a good indication that you got to slow down, okay? We all get the chills at some point when we talk to somebody, okay? We all get that, so we got to slow down when we get that. Use that, that like, that feeling to kind-of guide yourself in how you respond to somebody. I think that's so, so, so important, okay? So, we've got another little, another little video, and we're going to jump into, I'd just kind-of like to describe some other stuff, so this is, again, from the pre-shoot, so here we go. I'm going to run you through my audio setup really quickly. I've got a Tascam DR- that is going to capture all of my sweet audio. So that means the logs are going to go to it. I've got my cameras already set to receive good, decent reference audio. The thing that we want to really make sure here is that everything is leveled out to negative 12 dB. Now, the reason I like the DR-60, and a lot of recorders have this feature, the DR-60 allows me to record two audio files at the same time. One at negative 12 dB and then one at six decibels lower than that, so that if I have a spike, or if I have something unexpected happen in my audio track, I've got myself a safety, right? Again, I'm here alone, I don't have any help. I'm going to try to make sure I have as many safeties in there for myself as possible. Now, if I did have extra hands or something like that, I'd probably throw in a second audio source. Maybe like a boom mic or something like that to kind-of, to help myself out with any kind-of noise that's going to happen as Ivan's, we're in the mic. So, I'm just going to take my chances here and kind-of like, throw caution to the wind because I've got to get Ivan in a chair, and we've got to just start this. So, I've got one less thing to do. I'm going to do a quick audio check with Ivan for levels, and then after that, it's off to the races, okay? Okay, so that leads us into this next section of like, capturing great audio, okay? Capture great sound.

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Ratings and Reviews

Cheryl Winkles
 

You're awesome, I learnt a lot from you, this is like a must-have first course for anyone who wants to step into video or filmmaking world. Highly recommended and thank you a million Victor Ha.

a Creativelive Student
 

Fantastic course, Victor is one of the finest instructors I have encountered. Great stuff, I would highly recommend this for anyone who wants to work in video

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