How A Pre-Interview Will Save You Time On Your Video
So I’m not sure how controversial this topic is, but I have seen/heard some things that are in opposition to what I’m going to talk about today.
PRE-INTERVIEW DEFINED:
A pre-interview is exactly what it sounds like. It’s when you have a conversation with your interviewee before you film the actual interview. The purpose of it is to get to know the story you’re going to be telling.
What I’ve seen and heard sometimes regarding this is to get to know just a summary of the story, but to not dive too deep. The idea is to leave the in-depth and emotional conversation for the filmed interview. The other part of that is to try and let the story fall naturally and play out “organically” and try not to touch it or influence it so as to not manipulate the story subconsciously.
In theory that sounds good, right? But here’s the problem.
A good story, especially through the medium of video, doesn’t “just happen.” A good story has a solid structure, so that it’s engaging and effective. And in all cases we will be editing a testimony (because we can’t just play the raw 1 hr + shot, right?), so no matter what, we’re making decisions on how to tell the story- that’s story structure.
So when it comes down to it, it’s a decision of deciding to figure out the structure before the interview or while in editing.
In my experience, it’s WAY more effective to learn the story and plan out the structure before filming the interview. That’s why it’s so important to take pre-interviews seriously!
And this is why:
A PRE-INTERVIEW ALLOWS YOU
TO CREATE A STORY STRUCTURE IN ADVANCE
Recently I had a pre-interview with a guy who’s story we’re going to tell for Easter Sunday. It was over a 1 hr 1/2 long conversation, and during it I learned a LOT.
Initially the idea was to interview just him, but after our conversation I realized that his wife is a very big influence on a part of his story we need to tell. That means we’ll probably end up interviewing her too (in some way.) This wouldn’t have happened without an in-depth pre-interview.
I learned about his WHOLE life story, since he was a kid. It’s long and quite the journey, but since this testimony can’t be 1 hr long, it helps me figure out what parts of his story we need to tell and what to cut. Now I can work on the story structure and it will help lead the interview when we film because I’ll know what areas to really dive into. If I hadn’t gone in depth now, our filmed interview would’ve gone like this pre-interview- long, full of unnecessary tangents, and not enough deep-dive into the most important parts.
Am I worried about the interview feeling repetitive?
Not at all. It might seem a bit repetitive at first, but I’ll usually ask things in a different wording or ask for a different perspective. I also get a chance to deep-dive into the parts of his story that we decided to focus on that we didn’t talk a ton about in the pre-interview. I’ve done many of these types of interviews, and I’ve never had a problem of it “feeling repetitive.”
Would I ever film without a pre-interview?
Not by choice. Not having a pre-interview means I can’t craft the story structure in advance. I’ve seen and experienced how much better a story is when I can go into the interview prepared and fully aware of the storyline. It’s ALWAYS better, and way easier in post. But if it was some anomaly, I would do it with full awareness of it being much more difficult to create a story structure AFTER filming.
I hope that helps in explaining why pre-interviews are SO necessary, and hopefully it encourages you to take them seriously every time. :)
Need some tips on creating story structure?
I share an easy tip on how to start creating your storyline here.