Producing and Promoting Valuable Remote Video Interviews

by: Bella Glanville

Creating a video interview for guests in remote locations can be difficult, have poor quality and may not provide much value to the viewers. The Internet is unreliable which can distort video and audio media. Guests are not professionally trained as actors and unprepared guests don’t share much helpful information. This article covers some remote recording tools and ways to prepare guests that provide much more valuable and engaging content.

I video interview expert guests on the TV Metaverse show – TVmVerse.Show/bella-glanville. To get the best and most valuable interviews, we do pre-interview preparation, use reliable recording platforms, rough cut and polish edit the recordings, publish and distribute on multiple media channels, promote and help guests to promote their interviews.

Interview Objectives

The audience, guest and show have different objectives. Viewers want to discover something new, valuable and how they can use it. Guests want publicity, credibility and to get new contacts. The show wants to attract and provide value for audiences, get sponsors and advertisers. We use tools and processes at TV Metaverse to ensure objectives are met for all who are involved.

Topic and Guest Selection

The topics and guests we select come from a mix of our hosts, industry expert editors along with requests from company and people. If you want to request a topic or to submit to be a guest, go to TVmVerse.Show/innovations.

Pre-Interview Preparations

Pre-interview preparations include providing guests with draft interview questions for updating and providing guests with interview instructions.

Interview Questions

We have a starter set of questions which are sent to the guest for review and updating. Guests are encouraged to share these with their marketing, sales and operations people to identify key topics, keywords to discuss during their interview. We also ask guests to share references to additional materials that can help the viewers. Providing access to reference materials is a great way for guests to get visitors to their website and potential new customers.

Guest Instructions

Guest instructions include recommendations for appearance, performance, location and technical details. We encourage our guests to avoid wearing clothes with small patterns as this can appear distorted when people watch videos on small screens. Our guests should choose a recording location that has low noise and are not likely to have distractions. This can be a rented conference room or their home during quiet time periods such as early morning. We recommend the guest use a reliable wired Internet connection if possible with a good quality microphone and a webcam that has at least 4k of resolution. For guests that want to ensure the highest quality, we can provide a guest recording kit that includes a camera, microphone, lighting and a stand that holds interview outline notes.

Interview Platform

The interview platform determines the quality of the media and should be easy for the guest to use without requiring any software to download. It is important for the platform to record separate video and audio channels for easy editing and for the host and guest and to record their media locally on each computer and upload after the session is completed. This ensures that poor Internet connections have no effect on the media quality. We use Riverside.fm which is capable of recording 4k media and has many professional recording and editing features.

Running The Interview 

Running the interview starts with pre-interview introductions, guest instructions, topic and guest introduction and interview questions. The introductions and instructions should help the guest feel comfortable. The interview should be conversational with natural discussion which adds authenticity to the session. It is helpful if the guest and the host have the interview question list near the camera for quick reference. The guest should understand that it is okay to ask to re-record (retake) any portion of the interview. It can be helpful to have a live director on the call to monitor, provide feedback and suggest changes or retakes 

Interview Editing

Interview media is rough cut edited by the host and enhanced by video editors and media professionals.

Rough Cut

The full recorded session is initially edited (Rough Cut) by the host. The host can delete guest instructions, commentary and unwanted media (re-recorded segments). We use a transcription service Descript.com that allows us to see full text, shade and delete unwanted content without requiring special training or editing skills. 

Polished Cut

The rough cut interview is then improved with professional edits. These include adding graphic effects such as lower third name and title graphics, getting rid of unwanted sounds, stutters, filler words. We don’t use the term final cut because our guest companies can sponsor the interview and add overlay images and links into the interview that motivate more viewers to get more information from the guests website.

Reviews and Approval

TV Metaverse show allows a guest and their company to review and accept or reject some or all of the interview content. This may be because some private information was mentioned, the presentation of information was not a positive view or for any other reason. Our TV Metaverse interview goals are to help our viewers discover and use new products and services. 

Interview Promotion

It is important to promote interviews on multiple platforms and in many different formats. This dramatically increases the number of viewers and ultimately increases they number of people who visit the guest’s website. Over 92% of our interview content may be viewed or read on other media platforms.

Media Posts

We transcribe and convert our interviews into 50 to 100 media posts – Tweets, blog posts, discussion topics, slides, video clips and other formats. We use templates with keywords, tags and other formats that are tested and continually updated to ensure they are discoverable and highly influential to viewers and readers.

Guest Promotion

We provide guests with ready to publish Tweets, Blog Posts and other media. This allows them to quickly promote themselves on their own website and social media platforms.

About Bella Glanville

Bella Glanville is the TV Metaverse show co-host and host of the TV Metaverse Get More segments. Bella is a producer, screenwriter and an award-winning actress.