Avoiding simple, yes or no questions in an interview force the interviewee to give longer, more explanatory responses. Learn to avoid simple yes or no questions in interviews from an experienced interviewer in this free film production video.

In most cases, when a video is completed, the viewer is not going to hear your voice asking the questions to the subject. All they're going to hear is the answers being said by the subject. So, it's very important that you avoid getting yes and no answers from a subject. Now, how do you do this? Well, the first thing you do, is you tell the person that you're interviewing that you don't want yes or no answers, and give them an example. Tell them that you need to restate the question in the answer, so that people will know what they're talking about. But beyond that, you can ask your questions in such a way that people naturally want to give a descriptive answer rather than a yes or no answer. For example, instead of saying, "Do you like this?" you say, "What do you like about this?" Now, the person has to list what they like about something. Of course, make sure that when someone is answering, they don't just rattle off a list. The person has to start off by saying, "What I like about this is...", and then go into it. Ultimately, what you need are soundbytes that can stand on their own so that the viewer is just told a story in the end by the interview subject, and is not actually witnessing a conversation between two people.