When Is a Talking Head Not Just a Talking Head?
Bastian’s Blog
August 30, 2007
I’m sure that most of us have seen more than our fair share of what one might call, for lack of a kinder term, Talking Head videos. And no, I don’t mean avant-garde concoctions from David Byrne. I mean those occasionally painful videos that consist solely of edited soundbites from very uncomfortable-looking people perched precariously in front of a disinterested video camera.
Videos like that are no fun to watch and – to let you in on a little insider secret – they’re not all that much fun to make, either.
But bad Talking Head videos can be avoided. And quite easily, to boot. Before you begin your next Talking Head video, consider the following:
- Are you talking to the right people? Seems basic enough, but you’d be surprised how often people end up on the business side of a video camera who really don’t have much, if anything, to add to your message. This is not a numbers game. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.
In selecting people to put in the video, you want to make sure that they’re articulate – that’s a given. But you also should check to see if they really have anything relevant to add to the story you’re trying to tell. Two or three people with great stories will make a much stronger video than ten people with weak stories. So, what’s the best way to determine that you’re putting the right people on camera? Read on … - Talk before you talk
A short phone conversation with each of your intended subjects will give you a pretty good idea – and pretty quickly – if they’re the right person for the job. In this pre-interview you can get the details of their background, a sense of what story they’ll tell on camera, and a feel for how relaxed and knowledgeable they are on the topic.
And for those unlucky few who don’t sound like they’re going to produce what you need on camera, you can thank them for their time and move on, without creating hurt feelings and bad blood.
Now you’ve got the right people in front of the camera. Then what? - Want smart answers? Start with smart questions.
Well, we all know that you want to use “open ended questions,” which -- for those of you who missed that day at interview school -- just means that you shouldn’t ask questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”
But the best way to move forward is to actually work backwards. Think about what answers you want, and then craft your questions to elicit those answers. They say that in a courtroom a good attorney never asks a question that he or she doesn’t already know the answer to. You may not have the luxury of knowing the specific answers you want, but with a little research and planning you can craft questions that lead you into the right ballpark. And once you’ve got your subject in the right ballpark, they can start hitting verbal homeruns for you.
Just remember: It’s a conversation, not an interrogation. - Quotable Quotes
Finally, when it comes time to edit the gems you’ve mined from the interviews, you may find that when you cut out your off-camera questions, their on-camera answers lose some of their logic and punch. To keep the audience up to speed on what’s being discussed, we’ve found it helpful to punctuate the video clips with an occasional text screen that highlights a quote from the upcoming soundbite. - All you need is a sentence or a phrase from what they’re about to say (“… it was in 1941 that we really got focused on the war in Europe …”). Put that phrase on screen before they start their soundbite, and suddenly the audience has a context for what they’re saying and a sense of the key message before your subject has uttered word one.
Follow these simple steps next time you place people in front of the camera and you can be assured that your Talking Head video will be a video that people will be talking about for a long time to come. And if you can get David Byrne to compose the soundtrack, all the better.
Labels: Talking Head
posted by Martin Bastian at
1:55 PM
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