helpful tips for this interview

[Luke]

Hello everyone,

Seeking helpful tips for improving on this video interview. My goal was to create a high quality, professional interview video.

Thank you,

[EarlC]

Luke, the quality of your audio and video were excellent, the background music levels were spot on. The framing? CHECK! Agle? CHECK! I, in fact, appreciated the content and presentation as well.

If I were to offer ANY advice, the only thing I might appreciate seeing would be some cutaways to reinforce some of what your interviewee said, to maybe help diminish the “talking head” presentation. HOWEVER, I’m not so negatively inclined toward this as others may be because when the overall quality of the production is as good as what you presented in this segment, the INFORMATION is what I’m focused on.

Production-wise, I would have taken more care to ensure all my titles presented in the same manner, either fading to black, titles up, titles down, fade out with VO back to interview in progress. Some were allowed to dissolve out of black with the title continuing, then fading out over the subject. That didn’t seem smooth or consistent to me, but maybe you were seeking to accomplish something here of which I’m not aware.

You OBVIOUSLY know how to shoot for audio/video and it is quite possible your program/business has not yet figured out how to be financially rewarding, but the quality is certainly evident. In fact, I wish I had more people who can shoot interviews like this one for my Video StoryTellers! program.

Thanks for sharing and not allowing the OTHER thread responses to prevent you from doing so.

[Luis Maymi Lopez]

The framing and audio levels are good. Like Earl mentioned I will reinforce with cutaways, which could be just adding several royalty free pictures between different shots while she stills is talking (basically J and L Cuts). An upbeat music in the background helps a lot in this kind of interviews because it gives some life to the video.

There is just one problem with your video, is in mono. This means that it can only be heard on the left side of headphones. People who don’t useheadphoneswill not notice this because (from laptops at least) it seems your hearing from one audio source. Depending on your video editing software you can convert mono to stereo really easily, but if you don’t have such a feature you can use Audacity (free).

[JackWolcott]

I agree with the others; nice work. The lighting is tricky and you avoid most of the pitfalls of having someone back lit and using natural light streaming in from a window. I think you could have made this even better if you had used a bounce card to get some fill light from the window on the shadowed side of her face. The line between highlight and shadow on her face is pretty sharp.

Jack

http://www.videoccasions-nw.com

[billmecca]

Luke, that looks pretty darn good. I would check your tripod, looks a bit off level. and a small reflector to use some of that back light as a bit more fill on her face. also, watch your headroom, you have a bit too much and she is “sitting in a hole.” I know that can be an issue that is difficult to correct, many camcorder LCD screens underscan so you think you are framed correctly but get into the edit bay and you see things in the frame that were not visible in the viewfinder. I think many of them still handle video like it was on analog monitors with safe zones and losing the edges, now with web video and Flat screen tv that doesn’t really apply anymore.

As for what Luis said,,,, you’re actually NOT in mono, your in stereo but only have audio on one channel. If your editor allows you, switch the track to mono,(which will put the same audio out on both left and right channels) alternatively you can duplicate the one track and paste it on the other channel so you have the same sound coming from both sides. 😉

[Charles]

The only thing I could find that could be useful to you is to set the audio output to mono as it was only 1 channel. Besides that I have to agree with what everyone else has said. Nice work and keep shooting.

[Luke]

1) Get audio on left and right channels. Check.
Is there any good post on working with audio? I use Premiere CS4.

2)Cutaways, make them my friend. Check.
Is there any good short videos I can watch with good cutaways?

@Earl, I’m interested in your StoryTellers, send me a message to learn more about how we could do that here in Houston, Tx.

@lomaymi, thanks for the link. I’ll review it soon.

@Jack, is a bounce card something I can make on my own? Details please.

@Bill, yup, the tripod I have ‘looks’ level even after using the levelers on it… What I see on the view finder looks different in post editing…

@Everyone, thanks for watching, enjoying, and the feedback.

[Luke]

J and L cuts, thats what I was trying to do with the video, but didn’t know how using Preimere CS4. I kept unlinking video and audio, but then when I moved them the audio and lip movement didn’t match up anymore.

[EarlC]

Sent you an e-mail to your website e-mail address, Luke. Thanks for inquiring.

Earl

[Luis Maymi Lopez]

Luke you don’t need to unlink the videos to make J and L cuts. Let’s say you want to do an L cut. In Premiere use the selection tool and put your mouse on the end of a clip in the timeline. You will see it changes to a bracket with a line that will let you trim the individual clip. If you hold alt it will trim the video separate from the audio without making the video and audio go out of sync. You can also do this with the audio. Play around with this until you get the desired cut.

[Anonymous]

Sorry if this sounds harsh. I do lot’s of interviews, and have improved the most when I received valid criticisms. I wouldn’t shoot with a window in the corner, as the brightest objects tend to draw the eye. The framing could be tighter. Fill light or a bounce card would have been nice. The bookcase is a distracting mess of fallen books. Audio should have been faded in and out with each segment, and ambient noise is a bit of a distraction. Script fonts are generally tougher to read than a serif font like Times New Roman.

I hope this helps. Paying attention to the little details is a big part of getting a good looking interview.

[Author]

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