All courses / Shooting, story and sound
Ask people what takes longest and goes wrong most often, and most of them say the interviews
The interview is where a piece is won or lost. Everything after it — the edit, the graphics, the mix — is damage control on whatever came out of that room.
Two days on the whole chain: planning it, making the subject comfortable, asking questions that produce answers, getting sound that survives, and then cutting it honestly.
- Length2 days
- FormatOn site or online
- LanguageNorwegian or English
- CategoryShooting, story and sound
After the course you can
Better interviews for video and podcast
- Plan an interview so you know what you need before you sit down
- Put a nervous or media-trained subject at ease
- Ask questions that produce usable answers instead of prepared statements
- Record sound clean enough that the edit is not a rescue
- Cut an interview honestly, and know where the line is
What we cover
The program
Planning
- What the interview has to deliver, decided in advance
- Research that changes the questions rather than filling a document
- Choosing the situation — where and when a person talks best
- The order of questions, and why the good one is rarely first
The person
- Creating conditions where someone can think out loud
- The media-trained subject, and getting past the message
- The nervous subject, and the first two minutes
- What characterizes a question that produces a real answer
- Silence, and using it deliberately
Sound
- How to get good interview sound in a room you did not choose
- Microphone choice and placement for video and for podcast
- Hiding the microphone when it should not be seen
- Recording formats, backups, and the second recorder that saves you
Picture
- Lighting a video interview quickly
- Framing, eyelines and where the subject should look
- Coverage that makes the edit possible: cutaways, second angle, B-roll
- Recording so you can anonymize afterwards if you have to
The edit
- Text-based editing of interviews
- Frankenbiting, radio edits and other techniques — with the ethics stated plainly
- Hiding cuts, and when hiding a cut is dishonest
- Anonymization: picture, voice and what actually works
- Mixing voices against music so speech stays intelligible
- Short promo clips from a long interview
The honest bit
The techniques are taught with the ethics attached, because they are in every content creators toolbox and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
Who it is for
Content producers, video reporters, journalists, communication staff, photographers and podcast producers who use interviews in video or audio.
Prerequisites
None. The course covers both the craft and the technical side, so it works for people who only ask questions and for people who also operate the gear.
Bring
A recorded interview you struggled to cut. And, if you have one, an interview that went badly for reasons you never quite identified.
Open courses
Prefer a fixed date for one person?
Also runs as an open course at Qross Kurssenter — classroom in Oslo and live online on the same dates.
Questions
About this course
Is this for podcast or for video?
Both, and they share more than people assume. Where they differ — lighting, framing, the second camera — that is flagged, and the balance is adjusted to whichever you actually make.
We have a journalist who asks and a photographer who shoots. Should both attend?
Yes, and that is the ideal group. Most interview problems live in the gap between those two roles, and the course closes it.
Can we do it in one day?
You can, and then it becomes technique and sound. The interview craft — the questions, the person, the ethics of the edit — needs the second day and the exercises.
Related courses
Related courses
1–2 daysCamera and shooting technique
The edit is where the trouble shows up.
1–2 daysLighting for video
A new camera costs a month's budget and improves your pictures slightly.
1–3 daysVideo on a smartphone
Modern phones shoot material that holds up on any platform you are likely to publish on.
Want this for your team?
Tell me what goes wrong today and you get a written plan and a price back. Two sentences is enough.