Our clients are always asking what they need to do to get ready for the big day when preparing to have professional video interview filmed. We decided to put together a handy guide, which we hope helps out any business in the same situation.
TIP 1 – Choosing The Right Interview Questions
Avoiding the yes or no – Each and every one of us has been involved in leading a conversation only to get mundane answers like, “yes”, “no, or “maybe”. These are called dead-end questions and aren’t helpful whatsoever. They don’t lead to anything or provide any useful information for your audience.
What you need to do is come up with exciting questions which can’t be answered with a “yes” or “no”. We often suggest forming them around an open-ended question.
Here’s a great example of how to change a dead question to an open-ended question:
Do you like working here at Lawyer Co.? – This can simply be answered with a “yes”.
What do you like most about working for Lawyer Co.? This invites the interviewee to share something more emotional when answering the question.
You can also form these questions around the topic you want to get a response about. For example, if you wanted to lead questions about the company culture you would ask:
How do you think Lawyer Co.’s company culture differs from where you’ve worked before?
You can’t possibly answer this one with a “yes”. It will allow the interviewee to explain how it differs from other companies in their own words.
Tip 2. Picking An Interviewer
Picking a great interviewer can make all the difference. It can be very stressful for someone who isn’t trained to be in front of cameras and hot lights on a shoot, all whilst keeping up a consistent delivery, so it might be best to leave this to a professional.
You want to try to choose someone who is great at putting people at ease, attentive and good at reading body language. This will lead to the interviewee feeling like they are in a safe place and can share anything comfortably, allowing the best responses to come out naturally and also making them come across better on camera.
Tip 3. Picking Your Representatives
It’s right there in the title of this tip, your interviewees are the people who are now representing your company, so it’s a very important decision when choosing someone.
In some circumstances, you may not be able to hand pick an interviewee, as you may be set to interview a specific C-suite member or department head, in which case, don’t be afraid to prep them a little with some points they need to cover. If this is more of a comms piece rather than a video about them, scripting some responses with them is fine. They can always come up with their own personal versions of these rough scripts. It’s going to put them at ease and having something for them to practice with is going to get them nice and warmed up for the camera.
If the video is more of a company culture piece, you should pick people who really want to be there. There’s nothing worse than forcing someone to be on camera as they will come across as awkward and this doesn’t show your company in a good light. It also wastes expensive filming time.
Ideally, you should try to get a cross-section of your company from all departments and backgrounds, who are easy to chat to and can speak clearly and concisely about who they are and what they do. No one will listen to a rambler.
Remember to keep your selection of interviewees diverse and inclusive. Lead by example.
Tip 4 Location Location Location
We’ve all seen the boring white-walled conference room videos, and this doesn’t interest anyone anymore (we’re not sure it ever did). Trying to find somewhere in your office that looks great on camera is key. This might even mean filming in a location where people are working to get an appealing shot. Brickoven typically likes to pop down before the shoot day or have images sent of the office just to get an idea. We can also bring along some fake wall backgrounds and plants to jazz it up if need be. These bits of added flair can really bring a video to life.
If these options aren’t applicable, there’s no reason you can’t hire a location or local studio space to film your video. This is often more time-saving than people think as it gives us (the crew) time to arrive beforehand to set up and also gives your staff the freedom to turn up when their interview is ready to film. Scheduled, concise, and a lot more professional.
Tip 5 Where and Why?
This last tip could be the most important and is a question we ask every time our phone rings……Where is the video going and what do you want it to do for your business?
Is this for internal comms, an about us for the website, an intro for a conference, an update for youtube, a special offer for Instagram, or an educational snippet for TikTok? the list goes on and on.
All of the above platforms require a different tone of voice and can change the way you write your questions and answers. They might also require a different style of filming, editing, and different video output (think portrait or vertical framing, dimensions, etc).
Digital video is versatile – you can creatively repurpose the content from one shoot and re-edit it to suit multiple platforms. But our advice is to try and figure out which platforms you want to upload to before the shooting actually starts. It helps wonders when it comes to post-production!
BRICKOVEN love to collaborate with businesses on crafting their creative content and our knowledge and experience of each platform (TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo) help us get you the best value for your product.
We hope with these short tips you are ready for anything that your interview filming day can throw at you.
If you want a professional video interview filming, get in touch with us at info@brickovenmedia.co.uk or call us at 07840349091.
