How to record video interviews: practical tips

Recording an interview seems simple—you put someone in front of the camera and ask them questions—but most of the expensive mistakes come precisely from underestimating what it takes. An interview that looks and sounds good requires preparation of audio, lighting, framing, questions, and above all, the interviewee. The camera is the last thing that matters.

This guide walks through what truly makes the difference between a usable interview and a video you have to reshoot.

Before shoot day

Define the goal

Is this interview going into a 30-second ad, a 3-minute customer story, a 15-minute episode? Each format demands different preparation. Recording 90 minutes to get 30 seconds is wasteful; recording 30 minutes to get 15 minutes is agony.

Research the interviewee

Without prior research, the questions are generic and so are the answers. Thirty minutes reading or watching the interviewee's previous material improves the interview exponentially.

Design questions, not a script

Questions guide the conversation but don't straitjacket it. A rigid script produces robotic answers. List 8-12 open-ended questions, in logical order, with the flexibility to follow threads.

Share the questions (or don't)

Sharing questions in advance produces thoughtful answers but less spontaneous ones. Not sharing them produces freshness but more stumbling. Decide per interviewee: executives usually need preparation; experts usually work better without it.

Preparing the interviewee

The factor that most affects the final quality and the one most often neglected.

• Explain the context: what the video will be used for, where it will be published, how long the final version will be.
• Ask them to repeat answers if they stumble. Knowing they can repeat helps them relax.
• Remind them to look at the interviewer, not the camera (unless that's the intended format).
• Ask them to restate the question in the answer: "What problem did Polimake solve?" → "Polimake solved…" instead of "Well, mainly…". This makes editing easier because each answer is self-contained.
• Tell them what to wear: avoid thin stripes (they cause moiré), flashy logos, pure white, or pure black.
• Have them arrive 30 minutes early to settle nerves.

Audio: the most underrated factor

Audio matters more than the image. An acceptable image with bad sound comes across as unprofessional; a mediocre image with excellent sound can pass as good. The critical decisions:

Microphone type

• Lavalier (lapel mic): clips onto clothing. Comfortable, close sound, risk of rubbing against fabric.
• Shotgun: directional, captures only the source. Excellent sound when well positioned.
• Wireless lavalier + backup recorder: the most versatile setup for professional interviews.

Room and noise

• Check for echo. Large rooms with smooth walls are the enemy of clean audio.
• Turn off air conditioning, fridges, and noisy computers.
• Close windows. Background traffic ruins the mix in post.
• Record 30 seconds of silence ("room tone") at the start. It will save you in editing.

Levels

• Peaks around -12 dB, never near 0. Clipping is unrecoverable.
• Monitor with headphones in real time. If you're not listening, you don't know something's going wrong.
• Dual recording if possible: camera + independent recorder. A single point of failure is too much risk.

Lighting: what separates amateur from professional

• Key light at 45° to the subject, slightly above.
• Soft fill light on the opposite side to reduce harsh shadows.
• Back light or rim light to separate the subject from the background.
• Avoid pure overhead light (shadows under the eyes).
• If you use natural light, plan the schedule to avoid sudden changes during the shoot.

For office interviews without professional equipment, a large indirect window (not direct light) usually gives a better result than improvising with ceiling lighting.

Framing

• Medium or medium-close shot (from the waist or chest up).
• Look room: the subject shouldn't be centered if they're looking to the side. Leave space on the side they're facing.
• Rule of thirds: eyes on the upper horizontal line.
• Blurred background usually flatters; depth kills attention.
• Make sure no distracting elements appear behind them (cables, personal items, unauthorized logos).

B-roll: what makes the piece editable

Without B-roll, a 5-minute interview is 5 minutes of talking head. Boring. With B-roll, that same interview breathes, illustrates, and holds attention.

• Always shoot B-roll of the interviewee in their context: working, showing the product, in their environment.
• B-roll of the product / service they talk about.
• Details: hands, gestures, close-ups.
• Minimum: 5-10 minutes of B-roll for every 30-45 minute block of interview.

Common mistakes that ruin interviews

• Not testing audio before starting. Discovering that the mic was clipping half an hour in is tragic.
• Not having an audio backup. A single track, a single point of failure.
• Not leaving pauses between question and answer. The interviewee answers over the question; in editing you can't separate them.
• Asking closed questions (yes/no). They produce answers that are useless for editing.
• Not asking the obvious. Sometimes the most useful thing is the answer to the most basic question.
• Not covering what was promised. Leaving the shoot without the key quote from the original brief means coming back.

In creative operations

Interviews are one of the most reusable formats: a good interview produces material for the website, social, sales, recruiting, and events. The difference between making the most of that investment and wasting it is tagging and archiving well: each answer indexed, each key quote marked, B-roll associated with the subject. Without that discipline, the material from the interview six months ago is lost.

At Polimake, interview raw footage goes into Media with automatic tagging and semantic search, the edited cuts are managed in Studio, and the shoot plans + briefs live in Studio—so that every minute recorded becomes a findable asset.

Related concepts

• B-Roll / B-Cam
• Post-production
• Production day
• Voiceover
• The process for making a video

---

This piece is part of the Polimake glossary and the cluster on creative operations. If you manage interview production at an agency or in-house team, also read content production at scale.