Tips for recording interviews in a digital environment (or just looking and sounding great on video calls)

Over the last couple of years, all of us have got used to video calls as we transition to working a lot more from home. Some of us are now completely home based, others of us spend a large part of our working lives based at home, even if we have returned to the office. However, while we may have the technology to make this happen, we don't necessarily have an understanding of how simple things like lighting can cast us in a more professional light.

As a business to business publisher we record a lot of in-depth interviews with business and service leaders and with an international audience a lot of these interviews are recorded remotely, and whenever we set up a remote interview we have a short list of handy tips that can be easily implemented to help our guests look and sound great - which of course makes our content look more professional as well.

Having just sent exactly that document over to our the latest guest to join us on the Field Service News Digital Symposium I thought I would share some of those tips as well as outline what I use for my own set up at home those of you who follow me on LinkedIn as these simple tips can be useful for any video call whether it is a recorded interview or just a cadence meeting with a client.

For transparency, I do have an affiliate account with Amazon and Riverside FM so if you do purchase anything from the links I will get a tiny bit of referral payment, but pretty much everything I've linked to is something I currently use personally and that is the only reason I include it. (There is one exception to this which is the mobile ring light, which I don't have and what I've listed is just the option I would go for if I needed one)

Also to state the obvious, but the following is by no means an exhaustive list of high-end cinematography and sound engineering - but it is a useful start for anyone who wants to make their video calls and recording look that little bit more polished - so hopefully it may be of help to some of you.

Lighting:

Okay so let's start with lighting. Don't worry, we don't expect you to go full-on Hollywood. In fact most people, particularly when recording from home are usually in a small space with little room for additional lighting. However, a little bit of understanding of how lighting is used in filming and photography can really help you maximise your set up.

There are three main lighting positions you want to consider.

Key light:

The most important light is a key light – which is a light in front of you. This can help for a few reasons firstly it can diffuse the blue light of the screen you are look into which can often give people a slightly ‘cold look’. Also, a strong key light can help remove any shadows that can make us look like tired with bags under our eyes etc.

If you are recording in the day the best key light is often simply a big window so positioning a laptop in front of a nice big window often does the trick. The one thing you don’t want to do is have a window behind you (unless you are going for an ominous silhouetted look - which may not be the best choice for a business call!)

If your recording at night or in a darker room its often amazing what can be done with a few well-placed lamps. The important thing to remember here is that you don’t want the light to be so bright that it is blinding you but so weak that it doesn’t add any benefit. Obviously lights with dimmers are great and hue lightbulbs (and similar) are fantastic because you can control brightness and colour temperature. However, if you just have a good old fashioned on off switch then just moving a lamp closer or further away can often sort things out.

Back light:

Does what it says on the tin. Is a light at the back. Basically, what this does is helps you pop out of the background. Again, a well-placed lamp can do the trick.

Generally, you don’t want this to be too bright or too close to you (unless you’re looking for that washed out in heaven look.)

Fill Light:

If you really want to get fancy, then a fill light will help as well this is a light that goes to the side of you slightly ahead of you and generally on the opposite side of the key light if the key light is positioned more to one side than another. It should also be roughly half the strength of the key light. It should also be a bit lower than the key light.

Most of this is overkill though. Sitting in front of a window on a bright day is usually enough.

That said, I'm a big fan of the Hue Lightbulbs (have been for ages and have them all across my home) and they can be particularly useful in this scenario as they have that element of control and you can get a starter pack for about ￡80 here which includes the bridge, a smart button and a couple of bulbs.

Another option if you have space and want something more powerful would be to pick up a kit like this one from Neewer. In fact, I use these exact lights in my small home office as they are relatively compact and have a great element of control. I use these for my key and fill lights. For my back light, I have a small light (again by Neewer) designed to be mounted on a camera like this one but I just use a magic rig arm to mount it on my shelves like this.

One other option that I personally use but think worth mentioning is the ring lights that are designed to hold mobile phones. This could be a great option for those that travel a lot or like to use their mobile as their main device for video calls. Loads of options here and having not used them myself can't couch for them personally but a quick look on Amazon and something like this looks good in that it is cheap (￡10), has decent reviews and available on Prime for quick shipping.

Microphones:

Most people don’t use a microphone, but it can make a massive difference and if you are going to invest in a mic then a couple of things to consider.

Firstly, go for a cardioid or hyper cardioid polar pattern. While there is a whole world of polar patterns to get lost within on the surface level all you need to know is either of these do the trick. Basically a cardioid mic means that it doesn’t record a lot from behind (imagine a heat shape with the mic in the dip at the top - that is it’s recording pattern. This is good for recording digital interviews as it doesn’t tend to pick up the audio from behind it so v. useful if you are using a speaker rather than headphones.

However, cardioid mics have a wider range in front of them so give a more balanced sound than a unidirectional mic which can be an issue if you move around while talking (and we all move more than we think we do.)

A boom arm is a good investment as if the mic is placed on a desktop (even on a stand) it can have a tendency to pick up all sorts of taps and other noises.

A good pop shield is a worthwhile investment as well. These basically stop what are called plosives (basically p’s and b’s) where the air comes out of our mouths a bit more forcefully from hitting the mic and creating a pop sound. Another simple trick to help stop this happening is to speak across the mic at a diagonal angle rather than directly at it.

A very good value mic set that I recommend which I use as part of my mobile recording set up is (and costs way less than any other mic I have) is Tonor’s Q9 you can get it with a boom arm and pop shield included for about ￡60 and the mic is particularly good for spoken word recording.

In my home office studio I use the Rode NT-USB which is more costly, but I have an affinity for Rode products that goes way, way back to my days as an audio engineer and I just trust their quality. The NT-USB is definitely a piece of kit I've gotten value out of and continue to use day in and day out, so while it is more costly at around ￡120 it is a worthwhile investment.

What is a bad idea is a head mounted mic.

These are just terrible all round and you are better off using the inbuilt laptop mic over any Bluetooth head mounted mic. The stage mics that they are designed to look like are very, very expensive but this is one area where cheap options are just not worth looking at at all.

If in doubt just think of any time you had a call with terrible audio from a contact centre agent. If you could hear them breathing, annoying scrunching sounds as they move, popping whenever they say a plosive and all of that while you can generally here the conversations going on behind the agent as well... I guarantee they would be on a cheap headset.

Again, to keep things simple, often the internal mic on your laptop/pc will suffice - but if you’re going with that option then headphones become more important...

Headphones:

Headphones are quite a divisive topic. From a audiophile point of view headphones are essential as they allow reduce any bleed into the audio. From an aesthetic point of view headphones just don’t look great or natural.

The ideal balance for me is an in-ear bud (singular) that is not visible but give us the benefits of no bleed.

The really cheap yet effective option I use if I need to is this solo in ear headphone.

Again, going back to my days as a sound engineer, I always like to be able to have one ear in the real world and one ear to monitor the sound of the discussion. Of course, if you have a pair of AirPods or other in similar devices you can always just take one out. But for the sake of ￡10 I find it convenient to have the Coofine solo ear bud just on the desk (I am forever misplacing my other headphones in various gym bags etc)

Because everyone’s set up is different on digital recording, I suggest always having a discreet pair of earphones to hand for the recording.

However, often the software you are using will have some form of echo cancellation that can magically help you avoid bleed/feedback in a lot of situations.

In fact, the solution we use for recording our interviews Riverside FM is fantastic in this regard. From where I am standing, if you are intending to record interviews remotely then I cannot recommend Riverside FM highly enough. We've tried a fair few of the competitors and Riverside is the most stable by a landslide as well as adding new features regularly since we signed up with them a couple of years ago.

The key difference for me between Riverside and tools like Teams or Zoom is that each participant in the call is recorded locally and then uploaded to your cloud storage so you get full definition recordings and separate audio - which makes life so much easier in post-production and makes the output 100 times more professional looking. You can find out more about their solution here

However, while echo-cancellation can be reasonably effective in most situations, and honestly the Riverside tool is one of the best I've come across, even then it might not work in every set up (remember you have to accommodate for all the factors of the people on the other side of the call as well so a lot of variables) so to reiterate, it really is always worth having a pair of headphones to hand just in case.

One last thing on headphones - if you are using wired headphones, avoid the ones with a microphone in them. This will automatically over-ride your internal mic if you are using one and you get unusable audio filled with the sound of the mic rubbing against your clothes more often than not.

Some other stuff to think about:

It is important to have a drink to hand. Water remains the best option as it is great for fixing a dry throat or that tickly cough that can occur when we are talking for a long time.

If it is an interview - don’t over-rehearse your answers. People prefer to listen to a genuine conversation rather than a well-rehearsed script. Often it can be useful to have a couple of key points/anecdotes that are your well versed in to weave into conversation as these can help you move from one point to another and also steer the discussion onto your most comfortable areas but these should be only lightly used and the most important thing is to have a genuinely engaging conversation.

If the session is a pre-record, you can always go back to a point if you lose your train of thought but try not to do this too often as it makes for a less fluid edit.

Sit away from the desk. We all talk with our hands. All of us. If you try to not do it you look unnatural and you won't be able to do it anyway. If you are close enough to the desk that you can tap it with your hands at some point you will. If it is a recording, this will result in sounds that need editing out (if possible, often it is not as the sound is on top of that really salient point you just made) and also it'll make your camera wobble. Which again is a pain for the poor video editor to have to fix.

So my advice - move back enough to give yourself space to speak freely and let your arms flow.

Anyway, a bit of a departure from my usual field service or leadership related discussions but hopefully of help for some of you that follow me.

Remember if you are looking for the latest news, analysis and insight on the trends in field service you can find them and much more of my work over at fieldservicenews.com

#remoteworking #videocalls #interviewtechniques