14. Conducting Interviews & Getting Sound

Conduct a video interview with questions that will lead to good sound bytes. Learn to get good sound bites when interviewing from an experienced interviewer in this free film production video.

Now the whole point of an interview is to get good sound bites, good concise pieces of information that will later be used in the video. The person with whom you're speaking, may be telling you great stuff, but it's just not short enough, it's not concise, there are certain places where the person trails off and you want to have one sentence to short paragraph of quality information said at once. What I recommend doing is taking notes as you're conducting the interview so that you know what the person has been speaking about. Every time someone messes up what they're saying but it's good information, make a note of that, put a little check mark next to your note and then ask the person to repeat what they said, but tell them; "Can you sum it up in a sentence or two? Can you tell me that story one more time but start off with a sentence?" and say the sentence that would be a good starting point. Making sure that someone maintains consistent energy throughout the sound bite is also important. Someone can be speaking really enthusiastically and then sort of trail off, like I just did. You don't want that so if that happens, tell someone, "That was a great thing you just said, let's hear it one more time but I need you to maintain the energy the whole way through", and the person with whom you're speaking will understand, because they know that you're trying to make them sound good. As long as you make sure the person understands that this is for their benefit, they'll work extra hard in giving you a good sound bite.