The Biggest Mistakes In Scheduling On-Camera Interviews

There are things in life that are certain - death, taxes, and the fact that your video shoot will fall behind schedule. Despite that inevitability, however, there are things you as a video producer can do to help your production stay on track.

One of the problems I see from less experienced producers is that they consistently underestimate just how long it takes to conduct a sit-down interview. The balancing act between budgeting and scheduling a video production can be tricky. I certainly understand the need to keep costs down (and therefore the temptation to cram as many interviews into a single day as possible), but there is always a point of diminishing returns. If you pack more and more interviews into your day, that only means that you have less and less time to conduct each one. And if you only have 10 minutes with each interview subject, you will only capture superficial, generic sound bites. You just don’t have the time for in-depth, quality thoughts and reflections. I always prefer fewer interviews if it means better quality for my finished video.

So, that’s the first thing you need to think about when scheduling your interviews: more isn’t always better. Your 2-4 minute promotional video doesn’t need 10-20 different interviews subjects to get the point across. Sound bites will end up sounding redundant. Start off by trimming the list of interview subjects. Go for quality rather than quantity.

Second, remember that the interview will always take longer to conduct than you think. Sure, you may think that the actual interview will only take 15 minutes, but what happens when…

• you find the interview subject is camera shy and isn’t as eloquent as you thought?

• the subject wants to repeat or rephrase everything he/she says?

• the subject brings a list of bullet points he/she wants to hit, but keeps forgetting what’s been prepared?

That 15-minute interview has now ballooned to 45 minutes, or perhaps an hour. Now you have three other interview subjects on location waiting around. If you think you only need 15 minutes to actually conduct the interview, give yourself a cushion of at least 30 minutes.

To help tighten the schedule, minimize company moves. Find one location in which you can shoot all of your interviews. That way your crew doesn’t have to break down, move, and set up for every single interview. Sure, it’s ideal to have a variety of locations for each interview, but sometimes it’s not practical. If I have to shoot interviews in one location, I like to try and find a spot where I can turn the camera in different directions and find an entirely different look. That way, I can still obtain the variety I’d like, without the time-consuming set-ups.

Speaking of set-ups, that’s the other variable that usually isn’t given enough time on the schedule. I’ve been on shoots where the client and the producer have lined up an interview at one location at 9am, only to have the second interview starting at 9:30 at the other side of the building. They’ve completely forgotten about the time it takes to wrap the gear, move the entire crew to a new location, and then set it all up again.

I know what you’re thinking, “This sounds great, but I don’t have the budget to spread all of this out over three days. I need to get everything done in one day.” Well, I think you can still capture what you need to capture in a day and adhere to a realistic interview schedule. Now, assuming that you are producing a simple, straightforward promotional video for your business, here’s what I would do:

• Pick one location for all of your interviews

• Schedule no more than four interviews.

• Block off one hour per interview.

• Now you still have five hours left in the day to capture doc-style b-roll of your business, assuming that all of the action needed to capture happens in one office space.

If your project is slightly more complicated, like your business is spread out over multiple locations, or if it’s important to the video to have more than four interview subjects, then you will probably have to adjust your budget and your expectations. You might need to hire two camera crews to capture everything you need, or you may need to expand the amount of shooting days, or both.

If you work with an experienced video producer, you can avoid a massive scheduling headache, but if you have to do it yourself (for whatever reason), take the above advice and it will really help alleviate problems on the day of your shoot.

Have any other thoughts? Leave them in the Comments.