"Q&A" Interview Report Examples

My broadcast journalism students have an assignment to produce an on-camera report with a newsworthy person of their choosing.

They will arrange the interviews and then work with a classmate who will videotape the interview. The interview will be shot and edited in a certain way utilizing a number of common TV news videography and editing techniques, such as the head shot, listening shot and reverse question.

Here are a couple examples of the finished product from previous semesters. Thanks to Brianna Salem and Mariah Reed for allowing me to share their fine reports.

"Student Sound Off" Commentaries

My Electronic Media Production I students continue to learn about the Adobe Creative Cloud platforms. We are now into Adobe Audition, which is used widely in radio to produce news reports and commercials.  It is also used by podcasters, musicians and other music and audio producers and performers.
To get the students hands on with Audition, I asked them to come up with a 60 second commentary. The topic is of their choosing. They could call it "Student Sound Off" if they choose.

I like the assignment because it gets the students writing and expressing themselves about a subject of which they feel strongly.

In our radio recording suite, the students record themselves using Audition and our Allen & Heath XB 14 consoles.  A photograph is made of them at the controls and then they use Photoshop to put some words on their image, such as you see in these examples.

In Adobe Premiere Pro, the students then combine their photos with the mp3 file that holds their commentaries. Then it is put on YouTube and finally imported into their Blogger blogs.

Thanks to Douglas Fairnot and Ashley Hendricks for allowing me to share their commentary projects here. Click to hear what's on the minds of these fine students!

Adobe Audition Introduction

Audition is another valuable content creation program that is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud our communications students have access to at South Carolina State University.

Adobe Audition is widely used in the radio world to produce news reports and commercials. It is also popular among podcasters.

This week I showed students in one of my classes the basics of Audition importing, trimming and mixing voice with music.

I showed the class how I produced this radio-style news report about the then still under construction Chestnut Street pedestrian bridge linking campus to a pair of apartment complexes popular among our students.

Before posting the mp3 audio file to Blogger, it must first be uploaded to a free site such as WikiUpload.

This tutorial shows how to place an audio clip on Blogger.  

I have assigned the students to write, record and produce a recording that shares their thoughts and views about a topic of interest, such as the upcoming anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, or another subject of their choosing.  

Adobe Audition Logo

TV Interview Camera Position

When shooting video interviews there's a certain choreography that goes on among the three principle people to ensure that they look and sound right.
Here, Larell Mackey is shooting, Lynn McGrier is the reporter and Candice Mayben is being interviewed.
Larell is positioned right over Lynn's shoulder so that he is seeing and recording Candice so that we see her full face, not a profile shot.

The microphone needs to be within six inches of the interviewee so that high quality sound is recorded.  If the mic is too far away from the subject the recording may be weak and there could be the hiss of "room noise" picked up.

If the interview is correctly choreographed, the end result will be an interview "head shot" that looks like this.

Good job team!

For more tips, check out this short video on framing and composition.

Following are interview shots that are not so good! 

Framing is off here. His head should be more to the left, not centered but more in the left third. Think rule of thirds. 

Same problem here. Framing is awkward. He should be more to our left. 

This shot is awkward because of the way we see the reporter's hand and the mic she is holding. Crop the shot so that we don't see the hand and only the top of the mic or no mic at all. 

This one is not as bad, but again zoom in so we don't see the reporter's hand.

Plus the subject is too centered in the shot. 

With two subjects, efforts must be made to not show awkward reporter arms. Solve by zooming in more. Have the two stand closer to each other perhaps.