Equipment for Conducting a Video Interview

Series Summary

The development of film came alongside the rise of America as a world empire. The technology developed in the late 19th to early 20th century and quickly became a staple of modern culture and mass consumption. Many trace the beginning of film to a moment also considered the advent of the comic strip as we know it: Eadweard Muybridge's famous pictures of a horse's stride, which proved that in fact there is a moment when all four hooves are off the ground. This series of photos looked like a comic yet sparked a crazy idea in the minds of other artists: What if we took pictures like that and flashed them in sequence like in children’s flipbooks? The birth of celluloid film ten years later came in Louis Le Prince's "Roundhay Garden Scene." In this free film production video series, experienced interviewer David Jackel teaches how to conduct and film a video interview. Jackel brings years of experience in reality TV to bear on video interview filming techniques. He covers lighting, locations, clothing and equipment to get the best interview. Jackel also covers topics for on-camera work, including how to correct grammar, use the same tense, ask productive questions, deal with shy interviewees and more.

Video Transcript

"Before you can start your interview, you need to make sure that you have all the necessary equipment. First and foremost, you need to have a good video camera, a 3-chip camera. You want to make sure that the camera has inputs available for high quality audio gear, so you don't want to be using a built in microphone on your camera, you want to use some that you connect to the camera. The standard audio gear that you're going to be using is a lavalier microphone, like I'm wearing right now. Hear that? And the lavalier microphone is going to give you good, directed audio, so right now, the microphone that I have here is directional, so it's picking up just my voice, and not my surroundings. You'll also want to make sure that you have a good pair of headphones. If you can't properly monitor the sound you won't pick up audio glitches here and there. A big part of what's going to make the interview successful is having a high quality audio signal so it's very important to make sure that you're monitoring it carefully and that you're using the best equipment possible to capture the sound. In addition to the camera and the audio gear, you need a tripod. Now you won't always use a tripod when you film interviews, but for the most part you will. You want a sturdy tripod. There's no sense in having an expensive camera sitting on top of a cheap tripod so make sure that your tripod is sturdy. You'll also want to have some form of lighting, because even though natural lighting is often a good option for your lighting, you want to have your own lighting that you can use, either if you want to be shooting entirely indoors with no windows, or if you want to be combating natural light, or compensating for it. Accumulating all this equipment is a bit of an investment but it really is necessary if you're going to get a good high quality interview that looks good and sounds good."