If you have been checking out the GW Today emails, you might have come across a few of the Trending Today videos. I am the PAF holding the mic and conducting the interviews behind-the-scenes.
In my placement this year, I not only have the opportunity to contribute to GW’s social media presence, but sometimes I also go out with the video crew and interview for various GW videos. One video series in particular that I help out with is the Trending Today videos for GW Today.
Trending Today is a video series that exists to highlight hot topics and events going on around campus and in DC. The two most recent Trending Todays I have worked on are the “Papal Visit” and a video highlighting freshman move-in called “Welcome to the Neighborhood” . You can click the links to check out the videos.
The experience of learning how to conduct an interview was something that I thought would be easy. However, there are quite a few things to know in order to be an effective interviewer. For instance, where you hold the mic in front of the interviewee and the angle at which you hold the mic matters for capturing the audio and making the mic look good in the shot. How you ask the questions also matters because you want to solicit robust answers from the interviewee and not just a simple yes or no. Additionally, it is important to have prepared questions that you can remember. While conducting interviews I often find myself racking my brain trying to remember the next question. The question always comes to me just in time, but there have been a few close calls.
The other major part of being on the shoot for Trending Today videos is finding people to interview. Our strategy is to go to high traffic areas on campus and ask as many people as we can if they are interested in taking a few minutes to answer questions for a GW Today video. In having to do this, I had to learn to positively deal with rejection. While we typically have quite a few people interested in doing the interview, there are definitely those who are “late for class” or simply do not want to be on camera.
This is one of the many experiences I have already had in the first month at my PAF placement, and I am looking forward to what the rest of the school year brings. And next time you see a Trending Today video, I am probably that guy holding the mic off-camera.
